The end (telos) of all things is at hand; and after darkness, I hope for light. Everyone is a philosopher and theologian; to some varied degree every individual has realized that there is something unbalanced in this world and their response to this revelation reveals a heart issue.
For me, my heart–numbed by man’s empty morality and trapped in a deceptively low standard of ‘goodness’–was subdued by God’s sovereign grace. My dad is a Christian pastor; growing up, both my parents were urban missionaries to homeless women with children. However, even with a church attending childhood and a God-fearing and Bible-abiding home, I struggled in understanding that Christ died in my place, He took the penalty for my sins, He took the punishment I deserved so now I do what I do in order to worship Him to glorify God.
Like a well-dressed but heart-hardened Pharisee I spent my life hiding from God in self-righteous ‘faithfulness’ because my sin blinded me. While I knew that my parent’s faith was not going to save me, I failed at seeing myself as a dead, sinful person. You see it wasn’t a matter of my good Christian upbringing but a matter of me fully realizing, through God’s grace, the severity of my sinful rebelliousness towards a holy God, my stubbornness in living in disobedience, and my utter defiance in God’s calling of repentance in my life.
I do what I do because I am aware that I live a life marred by sin, yet marked by grace. Though I fail, I know that the cross prevails. In the cross of Christ, as in a splendid theater, the incomparable goodness of God is set before the whole world. The glory of God shines in all creatures on high and below, but never more brightly than in the cross, in which there was a wonderful change of the things- the condemnation of all men was manifested, sin blotted out, salvation restored to men; in short, the whole world was renewed and all things restored to order.
I’ve lived a false belief that man can be a better man-kind through similar christian themes of being loving, humble, gracious, patient and realized that no multitude or movement of men can do what one man did for mankind. For love was man-ifested on the cross through one God in the form of man- Jesus Christ.
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