Again here's another brilliant insight from my favorite contemporary theologian
The relationship of hope and faith
People who know me or at least those who take the time to read my musings on theology and the life of Christians and the Church are probably familiar with my interest in relating exploring the social dimension of a believer’s faith in Christ.
Primarily because I am a staunch believer that though faith in Christ as Lord and Saviour are personal affairs – it does not mean though that it should be a private affair wherein a believer must be contented in living a Christian life of ‘working our their relationship with God’ through misguided exercise of personal piety and overemphasis on devotional Bible-reading and prayer, however good and important those things may be for each individual Christians.
Hate me as much as you want to but I believe that Christianity is not just about us and Jesus. Because the relationship that we have with God through Jesus Christ brings us into communion with millions of others. Otherwise there won’t be a need for the Church, which exists within the world to be a visible revelation of God calling upon mankind to become subject of His present and future Kingdom.
Looking at Christianity from the perspective of individualism hurts the body of Christ and its witness as it makes it seem that this present world doesn’t matter and that our relationships with one another (however imperfect they are), are not at all important because we have a personal relationship with Jesus.
It is in line with that thought that I have resolved to talk about this social dimension of the Christian life in previous and present post as well as in the coming days as I will try to share with you my personal readings on faith as articulated from the theological reflections of fellow believers who like myself are wrestling with Scriptures in defining a faith that is not ‘dead’ but rather a faith that is transformative not only in the aspect of the individual’s sanctification but also in the life and witness of the Church at large to the world that groans for its liberation when Christ returns in glory.
So it is here that I would like to share about James W. Douglas’ insight on faith’s relationship with hope as he has written in his book Lighting East to West:
_____
“The Christian experience of faith is in a God of hope to humanity, a loving God who will finally bring justice and peace to the world. The Christian prays, “Thy kingdom come,” knowing that when the kingdom does come, swords will be beaten into ploughshares – or more difficult to believe today that nuclear weapons will be abolished and the world’s masses freed from hunger and oppression. The Christian experience of faith is in a God who will finally transform the world as we know it, filled with violence and suffering, into a new heaven and new earth where love and truth will reign in people’s hearts and be embodied in a global community. Thus faith in God means hope for the earth, a hope for all humanity.”1
[1] Douglas, James W. Jesus, Gandhi and the Nuclear Age: Lighting East to West p.92
Some thoughts on Sola Fide
Sola fide.
Sola fide otherwise known as the Doctrine of Justification by Faith is the controversial doctrine that distinguishes most Protestant denominations from Roman Catholicism.
This basically sums up the rift that was opened between Luther and the Medieval Roman Catholic Church.
Historic Protestant theology upholds that the only instrumental cause of justification (or being made right with God), from the human perspective, is faith. While God is the ultimate cause of justification, Protestants believe that faith in Christ through the message of the Gospel is important. There are no works, no matter how meritorious they may seem, that can add to justification. This doctrine, according to Protestants, finds its roots in the teachings of Paul but was obscured in the middle ages and restored during the Reformation.
The rift is still there and the divide is still as great (perhaps even greater) than it was 500 years ago.
I remember the countless times that I’ve seen over-zealous self-proclaimed Evangelical Protestant Apologists would fire reckless words about Roman Catholics preaching what they call: “a gospel of works.” 
This is a common scene (or better yet a: ‘sticky thread’) on the Bereans Apologetics Research Ministry online discussion board, where Born Again Christians in the board would go on and on in talking about how Catholics got it wrong when it comes to salvation where in retaliation Roman Catholic apologists would more than willing to oblige in a proof-text bout that costs both of them their witness to Christ whom they both proclaim to serve.
I confess that I am among those zealous Bible Christians who at one point in my life looked forward to debates like that on the Bereans forum, I admit that I rejoiced at the fact that I can proof-text my point enough to have my Roman Catholic opponent concede his point against mine.
Even as my ego is stroked by my apparent victory in such debates I am at the same time faced with the question of how do Christians enter into a relationship with God before Luther articulated it into the doctrine that we have now come to call as ‘faith alone’. In other words how do pre-Reformation Christians get saved before it was defined as receiving Christ as your personal Lord in Savior?
Going further I am compelled to ask if: "salvation also entails believing in the Doctrine of Justification by faith?"
Before you pick up stones and start branding me as a heretic let me first makes it clear that I myself am a staunch believer of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone. However, I am also struggling with the question of Church history where whether we like it or not can trace a lineage to the Roman Catholic Church.
It is in that personal struggle with that difficulty in relating the doctrine of justification by faith alone with Church history that I am thankful that God lead me to a small bookstore called Bound in Tomas Morato, Quezon City where I was able to get a copy of Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright’s What Saint Paul Really Said for 40 pesos.
It is there he writes:
“There follows from this a vital liberating point, which I first met in the works of the great Anglican divine Richard Hooker, and for which I shall always be grateful. One is not justified by faith by believing in justification by faith. One is justified by believing in Jesus. It follows quite clearly that a great many people are justified by faith who don’t know they are justified by faith. The Galatian Christians were in fact justified by faith, though they didn’t realize it and thought they had to be circumcised as well. As Hooker said, many pre-Reformation folks were in fact justified by faith, because they believe in Jesus, even though, not knowing about or believing in justification by faith, they lacked assurance, and then sought to fill this vacuum in other ways. Many Christians today may not be clear about the niceties of doctrine; but however inarticulately, they hold on to Jesus; and, according to Paul’s teaching, they are therefore justified by faith. They are constituted as members of the family. They must be treated as such. This is not to say, of course that justification is an unimportant or inessential doctrine. Far from it. A church that does not grasp it and teach it is heading for trouble. It is to say that the doctrine of justification itself points away from itself. Believing in Jesus – believing that Jesus is Lord, and that God raised Him from the dead – is what counts.[1]”
It is fascinating to note that in my personal study of Church history that Born Again Christians seem to look at Church history in this manner:
- Jesus finishes His earthly ministry then ascends into Heaven
- The Holy Spirit comes to the disciples during Pentecost thus starting the Christian Church whose story was told in the Acts of the Apostles.
- For a good number of centuries the Roman Catholic Church was there and it was evil and the supposedly ‘true church’ was re-established my Martin Luther and then we Born Again Christians in the present uphold the pure Gospel that was articulated by Luther as Faith Alone.
Please understand that I am not saying that all Roman Catholics are Christians but just the same not all professing Born Again Christians are Christians as well. All I am saying is that the problem with our ignorance of Church history puts us in a shaky foundation.
It puts us in a spot where we uphold a doctrine outside of its historical context as it was borne at the time when confession and absolution within the Roman Catholic Church could be bought by means of indulgences being sold, resulting in penance that’s borne out of a financial transaction rather than genuine contrition.
It is in this failure to recognize this context that we fail to explain it fully thus making us passionate apologists of something that we do not fully understand.
For me the beauty of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone is that it is an available response for us to personally appropriate God’s saving work in Christ, who is the author and finisher of our faith. That’s why I believe that it is not the doctrine itself that saves, but the reality that the doctrine represents.
Discipleship in a Consumer Society
People who know me well know how much time I spend at bargain sections of bookstores primarily because it is the best place to find theological books at dirt cheap prices. Two weeks ago I was able to buy a copy of John F. Kavanaugh’s Still Following Christ in a Consumer Society.
The book was first published when the “greed-is-good” decade of the 80s was just beginning, where words like ‘globalization,’ the ‘WTO’ and ‘free trade’ were still buzzwords in economic circles; and Evangelical Christianity is still getting itself acquainted with Republican Politics and yuppie middle-class consumer culture.
What captured my fancy with this book as I began to read it this afternoon is the fact that it finely articulates the subtle flaw that springs out of what most of us has come to call as neo-conservatism within Evangelical Christianity:
“The rise of the “new conservatism” is a case in point. As I see this movement, often associated with morality and a form of Christian faith, it is not conserving of what is richest and deepest in human beings, but a preserving of ourselves from the facts. It is conservatism not of principle, but of pragmatism. It hungers for the legitimations of power and prestige-especially economic, military and ideological. And it represents all suggestions that right order has yet to be achieved in our country. It is a conservatism of self-interest.I believe that this statement is even more appropriate today more than it was in the 80s. The book is a really penetrating diagnosis of our culture of consumerism as contrasted with the personalism of the Christian Gospel, which speaks of a God who ‘became flesh and made His dwelling among us.’
This new conservatism is the fruit of two complementary but dangerous tendencies: the tendency to separate faith from the work of justice (active love and service) and the tendency to equate faith with a particular form of social, political or national power.”
In the book Kavanaugh speaks to the socially concerned, showing why working for peace and justice needs to support a culture-transcending faith. While to believers, the authors show how authentic faith requires doing justice –in our society, in our places of work, in our places of worship, and our personal lives.
The book offers glaring contrast of the Gospel’s meaning and social implication to that of the present Conservative Right’s support to post-911 foreign and humanitarian policy as well as on issues as varied as pre-emptive war, the environment, foreign debt, human rights and militant Islamic fundamentalism.
Finding God in a punk rock record
How Bad Omen’s new full-length album forced me to face up to the question of theodicy
Listening to the record reminded of this certain feeling of discomfort that I felt when I watched the NOFX concert in Manila two years ago, where after a few ignorant racial remarks NOFX then preceded to poke fun at Christians. This was not the first time that I felt this way whenever I would listen to a punk rock album or attend a gig.
As a Christian I would admit that it is in these satirized depiction of organized religion that I would always feel the sting of their sentiments, because they are poking fun at the people whom I (for better or for worse), I would consider as a brethren. I feel the sting mostly because whether I like it or not the punks’ take on my beliefs are for the most part true.
However it is also in these truthfulness of the punks’ parody of my personal faith that I find the ‘beauty of doubt’ in the way I live my life as a person of faith in the world. And Bad Omen’s new album, God Is Everywhere is one of those few records that challenges me to face the seriousness of Christianity’s failure to live up to the Gospel mandate as well as to ask those difficult questions about those that lie at the core of my belief.
In theology there exists the problem of theodicy which is defined by theologians as an attempt to harmonize the reality of evil with an omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-benevolent God. I come face to face with the question of a Loving God in an evil world where injustice prevails, when I hear the song entitled as: Jesus Hates Me.
As such lyrics like:
The themes explored by the songs whose lyrics reads something like:
I believe it is in these thought provoking questions about life and death that are expressed in the songs on God Is Everywhere that we also find a number of key affirmations of the Christian faith that ought to challenge us to confront such confusions about God and the faith we profess head-on. One of them is the reality that God shares the world’s suffering, no one will deny or at the very least remove the Easter story from the Christian narrative because it is in Jesus Christ that the Word of God suffers and dies. Human suffering touches God. God is not a distant or so enmeshed in nature that God cannot respond to suffering. Second, God can bring about good from evil. Last is the fact that, God will triumph over evil. At the heart of the central events of the Biblical story, the crucifixion and the resurrection, is the redemptive love of God. Death will be overcome and new life will become reality. God’s promise will be fulfilled. A new heaven and a new earth await those who know Jesus Christ. God frees us from the fetters that bind the present to the new future. Christ’s solidarity with the victims of evil is their liberation.
We all sit with Jesus in Gethsemane in His struggle with God-forsakenness. His prayers seem unanswered: “My soul is sorrowful, even unto death,” He says. The threat of death and destruction is real and anticipated. Jesus wrestles with the question of theodicy like us, just as the poor and faithful struggle with the violence and pain of our world. Here, prayer is the exact opposite of the “opium of the people.”
As I conclude this review I would like to remind all Christians that faith in the God of the Bible is based upon the trust that divine reality is guiding all things toward fulfilment. God’s promises to the people are also promises to fulfil creation. God has an overall purpose for creation that will be realized as the Kingdom of God.
Understanding the faith that people put in the God of the Bible requires that we see the world as the concern of God, not just our concern. After all, it was out of God’s concern for His lost children that He sought to redeem them at the expense of His own Son.
Listening to the record reminded of this certain feeling of discomfort that I felt when I watched the NOFX concert in Manila two years ago, where after a few ignorant racial remarks NOFX then preceded to poke fun at Christians. This was not the first time that I felt this way whenever I would listen to a punk rock album or attend a gig.As a Christian I would admit that it is in these satirized depiction of organized religion that I would always feel the sting of their sentiments, because they are poking fun at the people whom I (for better or for worse), I would consider as a brethren. I feel the sting mostly because whether I like it or not the punks’ take on my beliefs are for the most part true.
However it is also in these truthfulness of the punks’ parody of my personal faith that I find the ‘beauty of doubt’ in the way I live my life as a person of faith in the world. And Bad Omen’s new album, God Is Everywhere is one of those few records that challenges me to face the seriousness of Christianity’s failure to live up to the Gospel mandate as well as to ask those difficult questions about those that lie at the core of my belief.
In theology there exists the problem of theodicy which is defined by theologians as an attempt to harmonize the reality of evil with an omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-benevolent God. I come face to face with the question of a Loving God in an evil world where injustice prevails, when I hear the song entitled as: Jesus Hates Me.
As such lyrics like:
“Look up on the sky on bended knees. Pray for forgiveness or ask for anything. Do you think God will listen to you? When everyday there are others who ask too? (God Is Everywhere),”challenges me all the more to live a life of witness that attempts to vindicate the divine attributes of God, particularly with respect to holiness and justice.
The themes explored by the songs whose lyrics reads something like:
“When you’re in deep $h#@, God is testing you and if you don’t follow God’s rule you’ll end up in hell. (Oh God)”Misconception comes into mind whenever I would listen to such lyrics primarily because I know full well that those of us in the faith, often fail to live up to the Gospel call of bearing witness to a Crucified and Risen Christ. It is in our portrayal of God as the sanctifier of our desires that often makes people hate organized religion and altogether the God that we worship.
I believe it is in these thought provoking questions about life and death that are expressed in the songs on God Is Everywhere that we also find a number of key affirmations of the Christian faith that ought to challenge us to confront such confusions about God and the faith we profess head-on. One of them is the reality that God shares the world’s suffering, no one will deny or at the very least remove the Easter story from the Christian narrative because it is in Jesus Christ that the Word of God suffers and dies. Human suffering touches God. God is not a distant or so enmeshed in nature that God cannot respond to suffering. Second, God can bring about good from evil. Last is the fact that, God will triumph over evil. At the heart of the central events of the Biblical story, the crucifixion and the resurrection, is the redemptive love of God. Death will be overcome and new life will become reality. God’s promise will be fulfilled. A new heaven and a new earth await those who know Jesus Christ. God frees us from the fetters that bind the present to the new future. Christ’s solidarity with the victims of evil is their liberation.
We all sit with Jesus in Gethsemane in His struggle with God-forsakenness. His prayers seem unanswered: “My soul is sorrowful, even unto death,” He says. The threat of death and destruction is real and anticipated. Jesus wrestles with the question of theodicy like us, just as the poor and faithful struggle with the violence and pain of our world. Here, prayer is the exact opposite of the “opium of the people.”
As I conclude this review I would like to remind all Christians that faith in the God of the Bible is based upon the trust that divine reality is guiding all things toward fulfilment. God’s promises to the people are also promises to fulfil creation. God has an overall purpose for creation that will be realized as the Kingdom of God.
Understanding the faith that people put in the God of the Bible requires that we see the world as the concern of God, not just our concern. After all, it was out of God’s concern for His lost children that He sought to redeem them at the expense of His own Son.
Between Pentecost and the Second Coming...
...Christians are called to live in the world. So it is imperative that we should get involved with what's happening in the world.
I am sure that I am not alone with this problem.
I often struggle with living out my faith in light of the glorious hope of Christ’s return that I in a way have at one point in my life looked forward to as an instant escape from my personal problems and my inability to live out a faith that not only actively pursues a righteous life but also that of a just society.
Again I am pretty sure that I am not the only one who has struggled with this dilemma.
I believe that we have settled for an escapist eschatology that sees the ultimate purpose for humanity as being sucked into the sky for some disembodied eternal bliss.
This eschatology, has been horribly detrimental to the Church. It has taught us to either flee from the realms of ecology and social justice because God is concerned about the “spiritual” and not the physical (Conservative Protestantism) or to care about them without much good theological reason (mainline Protestantism). If we want to actually appreciate, care and love creation and each other, then a reworking of our eschatology is in order.
This is one of the main themes of N.T. Wright's book entitled: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, which reminds us that we in the Church have, for long time now, forgotten what the Bible actually teaches about heaven, hell, and the resurrection.
Because a clear understanding of such theological themes as he said would ultimately change our view of worship, Scripture, prayer, justice, mission, beauty, and everything else. Because when we came to faith in Christ, we must remember that we entered a whole new world that was started by the resurrection of Jesus and will be completed when he returns. Our job is to live in that world.
N.T. Wright is a British New Testament scholar whom Christianity Today has described as one of the top five theologians in the world today. After serving three years as the canon theologian of Westminster Abbey, Wright became the Bishop of Durham in 2003 – the fourth highest ranking position of authority in the Church of England. Although he is quite unpopular among evangelicals Bishop Wright is one of those contemporary theologians that I admire for his honest self-criticism of present day Christendom as well as for his dry wit and God-given skill to articulate the same issues within the Christian faith that I myself am also struggling with. J.I. Packer has described Wright as “brilliant” and “one of God’s best gifts to our decaying Western Church,” and I count myself as among those like Packer who is thankful for Wright’s gift of writing about the God whom I believe.
PBA0989r9163
"The task of the Church between ascension and parousia is therefore set free both from the self-driven energy that imagines it has to build God’s kingdom all by itself and from the despair that supposes it can’t do anything until Jesus comes again. We do not ‘build the kingdom’ all by ourselves, but we do build for the kingdom. All that we do in faith, hope, and love in the present, in obedience to our ascended Lord in the power of his Spirit, will be enhanced and transformed at his appearing."This is one of the reminders that I think I might need to put into a permanent sticky note in my head as a Christian who oftentimes forget to keep in touch with reality as it ought to be viewed from a Christian perspective.
N.T. Wright
Surprised by Hope p. 143
I am sure that I am not alone with this problem.
I often struggle with living out my faith in light of the glorious hope of Christ’s return that I in a way have at one point in my life looked forward to as an instant escape from my personal problems and my inability to live out a faith that not only actively pursues a righteous life but also that of a just society.
Again I am pretty sure that I am not the only one who has struggled with this dilemma.
I believe that we have settled for an escapist eschatology that sees the ultimate purpose for humanity as being sucked into the sky for some disembodied eternal bliss.
This eschatology, has been horribly detrimental to the Church. It has taught us to either flee from the realms of ecology and social justice because God is concerned about the “spiritual” and not the physical (Conservative Protestantism) or to care about them without much good theological reason (mainline Protestantism). If we want to actually appreciate, care and love creation and each other, then a reworking of our eschatology is in order.
This is one of the main themes of N.T. Wright's book entitled: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, which reminds us that we in the Church have, for long time now, forgotten what the Bible actually teaches about heaven, hell, and the resurrection.
Because a clear understanding of such theological themes as he said would ultimately change our view of worship, Scripture, prayer, justice, mission, beauty, and everything else. Because when we came to faith in Christ, we must remember that we entered a whole new world that was started by the resurrection of Jesus and will be completed when he returns. Our job is to live in that world.
N.T. Wright is a British New Testament scholar whom Christianity Today has described as one of the top five theologians in the world today. After serving three years as the canon theologian of Westminster Abbey, Wright became the Bishop of Durham in 2003 – the fourth highest ranking position of authority in the Church of England. Although he is quite unpopular among evangelicals Bishop Wright is one of those contemporary theologians that I admire for his honest self-criticism of present day Christendom as well as for his dry wit and God-given skill to articulate the same issues within the Christian faith that I myself am also struggling with. J.I. Packer has described Wright as “brilliant” and “one of God’s best gifts to our decaying Western Church,” and I count myself as among those like Packer who is thankful for Wright’s gift of writing about the God whom I believe.
PBA0989r9163
Evangelicals below is a statement worthy of the most serious reflection
A few months ago I stumbled upon www.anevangelicalmanifesto.com
The website hosts a document entitled: An Evangelical Manifesto, which is an open declaration of who Evangelicals are and what they stand for. It has been drafted and published by a representative group of Evangelical leaders who do not claim to speak for all Evangelicals, but who invite all other Evangelicals to stand with them and help clarify what Evangelical means in light of “confusions within and the consternation without” the movement. As the Manifesto states, the signers are not out to attack or exclude anyone, but to rally and to call for reform.
Below is a statement from the Manifesto that I believe is worthy of the most serious reflection:
The website hosts a document entitled: An Evangelical Manifesto, which is an open declaration of who Evangelicals are and what they stand for. It has been drafted and published by a representative group of Evangelical leaders who do not claim to speak for all Evangelicals, but who invite all other Evangelicals to stand with them and help clarify what Evangelical means in light of “confusions within and the consternation without” the movement. As the Manifesto states, the signers are not out to attack or exclude anyone, but to rally and to call for reform.
Below is a statement from the Manifesto that I believe is worthy of the most serious reflection:
"All too often we have trumpeted the gospel of Jesus, but we have replaced biblical truths with therapeutic techniques, worship with entertainment, discipleship with growth in human potential, church growth with business entrepreneurialism, concern for the church and for the local congregation with expressions of the faith that are churchless and little better than a vapid spirituality, meeting real needs with pandering to felt needs, and mission principles with marketing precepts. In the process we have become known for commercial, diluted, and feel-good gospels of health, wealth, human potential, and religious happy talk, each of which is indistinguishable from the passing fashions of the surrounding world. "
AN EVANGELICAL MANIFESTO
A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment p.11
A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment p.11
R.I.P.
To most it would seem ironic that I've opted to close down m35b on the day that I celebrate the start of my life.
I remember writing 5 years ago that this blog serves as:
But as with all things good one has to move on to other things.
Thanks to every single one of you who have been gracious enough to read, re-post and comment on the things that I've published in this blog.
A wise man once said: “endings are mere beginnings that are looked at the opposite direction."
Here's to new beginnings ;)
x.s.
for those who're still interested with what I'm doing I will every now and then post some stuff on the following blogs/sites
I remember writing 5 years ago that this blog serves as:
my personal Book of Eccleciastes where I would start out with the pondering of the meaningless of it all and where I would end it with the exhortation to, "remember our Creator in the days of our youth." So as to voice out a positive statement to live our lives fully in light of God's grace and gift of salvation but also of encouragement to make something out of our lives while we still can because truly life is for us to live.I believe it has served its purpose, in such a way that it has catalogued a good 5 years of my online life.
But as with all things good one has to move on to other things.
Thanks to every single one of you who have been gracious enough to read, re-post and comment on the things that I've published in this blog.
A wise man once said: “endings are mere beginnings that are looked at the opposite direction."
Here's to new beginnings ;)
x.s.
for those who're still interested with what I'm doing I will every now and then post some stuff on the following blogs/sites
some thoughts on apologetics
A few years ago I was so convinced that I would like to be an apologist like Ravi Zacharias, Josh McDowell etc.
It was during those times that I have misguidedly 'defended the faith' from people who are not attacking it, in effect turning-off more people, from God and Christianity more than effectively bearing witness to the gospel.
But as I grew older I came to refrain from associating with apologetics, and the statement below from the American theologian Frederick Buechner gives a very accurate description of the reason why I am now not so much into apologetics:
- Frederick Buechner
Whistling in the dark
An ABC Theologized
It was during those times that I have misguidedly 'defended the faith' from people who are not attacking it, in effect turning-off more people, from God and Christianity more than effectively bearing witness to the gospel.
But as I grew older I came to refrain from associating with apologetics, and the statement below from the American theologian Frederick Buechner gives a very accurate description of the reason why I am now not so much into apologetics:
"C.S. Lewis once said something to the effect that no Christian doctrine ever looked so threadbare to him as when he had just finished successfully defending it. The reason is not hard to find.
In order to defend the faith successfully - which is the business of apologists - they need to reduce it to a defendable size. It is easier to hold a fortress against the enemy than to hold a landscape. They try to make each doctrine as it comes along sound as logical and plausible as they can. The trouble, of course, is that by and large apologists are apt to end up proclaiming a faith that may be quite persuasive on paper but is difficult to imagine either them or anyone else getting very excited about.
The other danger is that apologists put so much effort into what they do that they may end up not so much defending the faith because they believe it is true but believing the faith is true because they have worked so hard and long to defend it."
- Frederick Buechner
Whistling in the dark
An ABC Theologized
on judgement...
“What's the difference between 'seeing sin' in someone else's life and confronting it, and having a critical spirit?”This is a very good question to pose in this day and age within churches. It seems that in all churches there exists some form of moral police that are always on the lookout for some brethren struggling with what they perceive as 'sin,' and then go on to start their diatribe about how they are 'holier than thou' and that if one doesn't repent according to their personal moral standards they will go on to tell that that perhaps they are not a Christian or perhaps that person is not 'saved' or that person is a 'backslider' and so on without looking at themselves and their lives.
Not only is this true for individual Christians this can also be true with whole congregational bodies assuming doctrinal superiorty over other churches. One does not need to go far to encounter a Baptist pastor claiming that only baptists are faithful to what the Bible says, or Congregational Fundamentalists who believe that Pentecostals are lower Christians, or Evangelicals who say that Mainline Protestant Churches are preaching 'another gospel' for advocating social justice instead of leading people to Christ.
It is with this thought in mind that I am deeply encouraged by an article that was written by Lisa Harper, in Christianity Today where she says:
“ We must remember the only One worthy of condemning us chose instead to pardon us. Then—in light of our own sinner-saved-by-grace stories—when the Holy Spirit impresses us to confront someone who's messed up, we'll do so with honesty, compassion, and humility. Our motive will be one of real restoration instead of self-righteousness. “
I believe the problem lies at the core of our hearts for as a people who have yet to reap the fullness of our salvation, - we are still struggling with the concept of grace, we find it hard to exhibit it precisely because we have yet to fathom the extent of God-given grace.
It is my prayer that as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons (and daughters), the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:23).
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