loudandclear

We have, alas, belittled the cross, imagining it merely as a mechanism for getting us off the hook for our own petty naughtiness or as an example of some general benevolent truth. It is MUCH, MUCH more. It is the moment when the story of Israel reaches its climax; the moment when, at last, the watchmen on Jerusalem’s walls see their God coming in His Kingdom; the moment when the people of God are renewed so as to be, at last, the royal priesthood that will take over the world not with the love of power but with the power of LOVE; the moment when the Kingdom of God overcomes the Kingdoms of the world. It is the moment when a great old door, locked and barred since our first disobedience, swings open suddenly to reveal not just the garden, opened once more to our delight, but the coming city, the garden city that God had always planned and is now inviting us to go through the door and build with Him (Revelation 21). The dark power that stood in the way of this Kingdom vision has been defeated, overthrown, rendered null and void. Its legions will still make a lot of noise and cause a lot of grief, but the ultimate victory is now assured. This is the vision that the Gospel-writers offer us as they bring together the Kingdom and the Cross.

It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, makng the world more human and more fraternal.

The point of receiving the Holy Spirit, it’s clear, is not to give the disciples new “spiritual experiences”, though to be sure they will have plenty. Nor is it to set them apart from ordinary people, a sort of holier-than-thou club- though to be sure they are called to live the rich, full life of devotion and dedication that is modeled by Jesus’s own life. The point of receiving the Holy Spirit is so that they can do, in and for the whole wold, what Jesus had been doing through His life, death, and resurrection for Israel.

So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? I should hope not! If we’ve left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn’t you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land!

That’s what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we’re going in our new grace-sovereign country.

Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin’s every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did.

That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time—remember, you’ve been raised from the dead!—into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.

Love must be real. Hate what is evil; stick fast to what is good. Be truly affectionate in showing love for one another; compete with each other in giving mutual respect.

Here you are, about to play a game that the world says is the most important thing in the world. Win and they praise you. Lose and they crush you. And here I have a chance to talk to the coolest, most courageous people. It puts it all into perspective. The game doesn’t really matter. I mean, I’ll give 100 percent of my heart to win it, but in the end, the thing I most want to do is not win championships or make a lot of money, it’s to invest in people’s lives, to make a difference.” Tim Tebow

Christianity isn’t a philosophy, a set of ideas. It isn’t a path of spirituality. It isn’t a rule of life. It isn’t a political agenda. It includes and indeed gives energy to all those things; but at its very heart it is something different. It is good news about an event which has happened in the world, an event because of which the world can never be the same again and those who believe it and live by it will never be the same again either.

Freedom is important, but in Christian terms it is never the freedom of a subatomic particle, to whiz around in all directions in an apparently random fashion. It is always freedom FOR: FOR the Messiah, FOR God’s people, FOR those who need the Gospel. Christan freedom is not freedom to do what you like, but freedom from all things that stop you from being the person that God wants you to be.