Part 2

"The Gospel should transcend our cultural, theological, and relational norms in our everyday lives"

This was the first statement I left y'all with a couple of days ago. I think that this is the essential element of the Great Commission that Christ left the disciples, and us, with at the end of Matthew. "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations..." ALL NATIONS. God has granted us the gift of Grace through the cross, intended for all groups of people all over the world. This good news is not ours alone... In scripture Israel was the chosen nation of God. We are in the same position as Americans that Asians, Africans, Latin Americans and the rest of the world is in. We have been grafted into the Vine of Christ by Gods love.

This is great news for us, but it also means that we do not have a monopoly on it, nor is it ours to choose to whom it will go, and how it will look. This is far beyond church polity, or the so called "great debates" of our modern church. All of that must be informed by the Gospel itself.

This is not to say that we shouldn't pursue holiness and sanctification in communicating and debating the good and evil in our Church and in our World. Christs sanctifying work comes through our community and our pursuit of Holiness: but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. 1 Thess 5:21-22. Paul also tells us to warn each other of Evil and Luther encouraged us to preach the Gospel to each other daily. But this is much different from the prejudices that I know I have in my own life, and from the ignorance of being isolated in our own lives, cultures, and local churches.

There is truth in everything. Every religion, every culture, every king and dictator, every liberal spirituality is here under the eye of God and His providence. This is not to say that we should go and eat up everything that is out there, but it is by Grace that we all are living and breathing each day... so we cant just cast aside someone, or some idea, as useless and totally false. The Gospel always has room to work and change people and things. Again I appeal to the testing of everything. Let us not justify heresy and false Gospels, but lets address them and work with them and teach against them with a mind not for defense of pride, but rather that God is doing a good and eternal work here.

We should rejoice in the diversity that God put on this earth. From the plethora of plants and animals, to the changing of the seasons, to the differences of each of us. The people of God once before thought that they could revel in being the same and "figuring it out." Then in Genesis 11 God saw fit to disperse them all over the world with different languages and confusing them, so they would not think they are greater than God.

God loves creation, and it will be good once more, even in all its diversity. The world is the way it is for a reason, diverse, because no one of us has the lock on the love of God. The thing that unites us is the Gospel alone. We are united as brothers and sisters in Christ, no matter what that looks like around the globe. That is for next post though...

Praise God!
and happy Easter!