Healing

I'm recovering from a cold, and the question I like to ask is "Do you think I'm getting better?" because I really want to know if it will end now or very soon. And the answer I usually hear involves the words "this shows your body is healing." The word "heal" is a word I like to hear these days. It's a slow and steady process, but it means I'll soon be back to normal.

It reminds me of how powerful that word is in the Bible. One instance of it is "I have seen his ways, but I will heal him" (Isaiah 57:18). On the days I'm feeling the sickest with my cold, I love to hear that it will get better. It will heal and is healing. And we can feel that way as Christians. On the days when we feel the worst, we can know that God is helping us grow and he's a forgiving God. Jesus' death and resurrection, and our faith in that, allows this to be true.

That reminds me of these verses: "He who was seated on the throne said, 'Behold, I am making all things new'" (Romans 21:5).

Redeeming Creation

Some Christians like to speak of renewing the world or redeeming creation. It is sort of right and on track. Implicit is the world is off track and needs to get on track.

For a long time I was very impressed by an approach of "renewing the world" or "redeeming creation." Ultimately I started to realize the issue is that the brokenness of the world was too great.

You see the Christian needs to exist more as an alien in a fallen world. He is more like an adventurer in an enemy land than most of us would like to think.

You see the Christian culture of this world is often more an enemy to true religion than a friend. To be Christian is to not reject God at many times.

I feel more and more that the United States of today is like Denmark in Kierkegaard's time. To be a Christian at that time was to Kierkegaard to be baptized in the church and not have rejected the churches teaching.

Thus Kierkegaard rejected that he was a "Christian" in such a limited sense and wished to call himself a follower of Jesus. I feel the tendency to abandon the term wrong but the impulse right.

You see today if someone states, "I am a Christian," in our culture the phrase has almost no meaning. There is a meaning of course but it could be an active faith or simply a vague affiliation with an ethic.

You see the phrase could mean so many things it has almost become meaningless. So what is Christianity?

It is faith in Jesus. It means to follow Jesus. It means to accept the teaching of Jesus that man is wallowing in sin and in need of a savor. It is to accept the solution of the cross that God has paid man’s sin and man has nothing to offer salvation.

Is there more to being a Christian, yes. But you see it is the siting under the teaching of the man Jesus. It is following the teaching his disciples left after his assertion to heaven as they clarified and expounded the truth of God.

And it is accepting all the previous revelation by God which Jesus said pointed to him. You see Christianity is something very specific and not general. And that is what we need to understand.