Quotation #1
Jesus was not revolutionary because he said we should love
God and each other. Moses said that first. So did Buddha,
Confucius, and countless other religious leaders we've
never heard of. Madonna, Oprah, Dr. Phil, the Dali Lama,
and probably a lot of Christian leaders will tell us that
the point of religion is to get us to love each other.
"God loves you" doesn't stir the world's opposition.
However, start talking about God's absolute authority,
holiness, wrath, and righteousness, original sin,
Christ's substitutionary atonement, justification
apart from works, the necessity of new birth, repentance,
baptism, Communion, and the future judgment, and
the mood in the room changes considerably.
Quotation #2
The gospel that we preach is good news because it is
not the story of our discipleship, but of Christ's obedience,
death, and resurrection in our place. The good news is not,
"Look at my life" or "look at our community"; it is the
announcement that in Christ God justifies the wicked.
Yes, there is hypocrisy, and because Christians will
always be simultaneously saint and sinner, there will
always be hypocrisy in every Christian and in every church.
The good news is that Christ saves us from hypocrisy, too.
But hypocrisy is especially generated when the church
points to itself and to our own "changed lives" in its
promotional materials. The more we talk about ourselves,
the more occasion the world will have to charge us with
hypocrisy. The more we confess our sins and receive
forgiveness, and pass this good news on to others, the
more our lives will be authentically changed in the bargain.
Source: from Modern Reformation, Volume 16, Number 3, May/June 2007, page 12 and 15.
Title of this article is Christless Christianity: Getting in Christ’s Way, author is Michael Horton
Modern Reformation Web Site
Posted on June 1, 2007
