The God Who Acts for Us in Christ

Here are some thoughts on the Triune God who acts for us.. Anyone who spends any time in the church knows that Jesus Christ is predominantly present. He is central for us because in him God has acted for our salvation. One way to think of this is Jesus Christ is God in his movement toward us. The scripture says, “In him dwells the fullness of God” (Colossians 1:19). Jesus Christ makes known to us the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God’s interaction with us is a triune interaction. In other words, God acts for us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the Gospel of John (10:37ff), Jesus makes it clear that he and the Father are engaged in the same works, and he later includes the Spirit in this work (John 14:15ff). We would make a grave mistake if we thought that the Son acted alone or separately from the Father, or the Father from the Son, or the Spirit from the Father and the Son. God never acts toward us in part.  The Father did not create all things by himself. The Father created all things with the Son and the Spirit. Our salvation does not come from Jesus alone but from the Father and the Spirit as well. The same can be said for the new life of the Spirit; it is also the new life of the Father and the Son. Therefore, our beginning with Christ is our beginning with the triune God.

Creaturely Media

There is much conversation about the means of grace in the Reformed tradition. The basic theology is that God’s grace is mediated to us through certain means, which are ordinarily scripture, preaching, the sacraments, and prayer. God’s grace does not interact with us in a raw, unmediated form. If it was unmediated, we would not be able to sense it, let alone comprehend it, because God is wholly beyond our ability to grasp and understand, in and of himself. God is our creator; we are his creatures limited by time, space, and the structures of our existence. Reflection on God’s mediated action toward us will prove to be abundantly fruitful. For example, it is not only true for the means of God’s saving grace, but also for his providence.  Here is a story of God’s mediated providence towards me.

Those who know me, know that I am an avid backpacker and climber of 14,000 foot peaks. In the 1990’s I was on a backpacking trip in southern Colorado into an area where there are three fourteeners: Mt. Blanca, Little Bear Peak, and Ellingwood Point. I hiked up to the open space into which these peaks all drain their rain and melting snow. The day I arrived in this bowl, as it is called, was early in the season and there was still three to four feet of snow in it.

The next day I proceeded to climb Little Bear Peak alone. I labored up the slope to the peak’s western ridge at about 12,800 feet. The route took me to the other side of the ridge on a line that followed the crest. On the ridge I could see the steep, rocky slope of Little Bear Peak, mostly covered in snow and ice, dropping down to an ice covered lake far below. The line I was on was level enough to hike but at the end of it was a gully with a rock face washed smooth by millennia of melting snow and rain running down the granite. In order to climb to the top of the peak I had to get above this smooth rock face. Fortunately, when I climbed it the snow was still frozen.

Following my guidebook, I worked my way over this rock face and scrambled back on top of the ridge. The hard work was over. From there it was a few more hundred yards to the top of Little Bear Peak. After a quick break, I began to make my way down the same way I went up. The main obstacle for my descent was that smoothed out rock face in the gully. I got above it and chose the way I wanted to go down. With my boots planted in the snow, I forcefully planted my ice axe in the firm snow. Carefully, I took a step forward and shifted my weight. Almost immediately, my feet slid out from under me. It turns out there was a sheet of ice under the thin layer of snow. But I did not slide down the rock and careen down the slope—1,000 to 1,500 feet—into the ice-covered lake below. The rag wool mitten I was wearing caught on a screw on the ice axe. There I was hanging on to my ice axe, by one mitten, with neither boot securely on the ground. It did not take me long to find better footing and I was able to get below the rock face and finish my descent to my camp on the other side of the ridge.

As I climbed down, I gave thanks to God for preserving me in spite of the fact that climbing that peak alone was foolish.  At a minimum, if I had slid down that slope I would have broken some bones, probably ended up in the lake, and no one would have found me for days. God acted in his providence with a rag wool mitten. That is how his kindness was mediated to me that day on the mountain. Using ordinary things, God is at work.

Another Call to Obedience

If you are wondering what a Call to Obedience is, look back at the  June 24, 2021  post.

In scripture we hear the Word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  And Jesus said, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.”  The church is told to have the same love, being in full accord and of one mind, which is yours in Christ Jesus who emptied himself in love for us.  And If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Christian love is an un-claiming love.  By this I mean it does not claim for itself. It is a love that considers what is truly good for those around us; we are to love others for their sake.  We do not love others because they love us, or will do what we want them to do, or because they do the right thing.  This is not the love of God who showed his love for us while we were yet sinners.  We are to love with the love of God. Now the church is the breeding ground for such love.  It is not bred on our own.  As we practice this love with each other and together we learn what this love is, it is known and grows and takes form.  Bred here among us, we take it out into the world and love even those who do not love us or love God.

The Harder Task

How easy it is to dismiss a statement or an idea because of who said it. One of the good consequences of teaching in a school is the dialogue that happens between the teacher and his or her students. The teacher presents an idea, and the class works with it. Sometimes the class raises questions or makes arguments that require the teacher to think more about what he is teaching. This happened to me on many occasions when I taught at a Christian high school. One incident stands out. I referenced the line, “love the sinner but hate the sin.” The class batted this around for a while and one girl in particular seemed to take exception to it. She made a number of comments and I tried to respond as best I could. Eventually, however, we moved on with the lesson. The next class this same girl came in and said she repeated this statement to her father and both of them searched the internet for its source. They determined it was Mahatma Gandhi—the leader of Hindus in India in the early twentieth century. I told her Dietrich Bonhoeffer also said it, the Lutheran pastor martyred in Nazi Germany. In fact, both of them are known for saying, “Love the sinner but hate the sin.” But this girl (and her father) rejected the statement because Gandhi said it, he was older than Bonhoeffer, and Gandhi was not a Christian. Therefore, as far as they were concerned, the statement had a non-Christian origin.

I decided to investigate the source of this statement a bit more. I found that Augustine expressed the same idea in a letter to the nuns at a monastery where his sister had been a prioress. She had died and Augustine was writing to encourage the nuns to respect their new prioress and live according to the Christian rule in their community. He called out the moral vice of being obstinate or headstrong toward others. Augustine gives instruction for strict discipline of this behavior and then follows it with this line, “Moreover, what I have now said in regard to abstaining from wanton looks should be carefully observed, with due love for the persons and hatred of their sin….”

The question for the Christian is whether “loving the sinner but hating the sin” is in accord with how God responds to sinners. This quickly becomes a long discussion and it is not the main point of this blog to work it out. I will add that the testimony of scripture is that God is opposed to (or hates) sin and those who are caught up in it (sinners, the wicked) are under his judgment (Romans 2:9). At the same time, scripture testifies that God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son” (JN 3:16). Augustine commented on this verse and said the world that God loves is not neutral but a mass of sin. God’s love for the sinful world— sinful humanity—highlights the magnitude of God’s love. Jesus also teaches us to love our enemies, which are first of all God’s enemies. It can be argued that the statement to love the sinner but hate the sin makes good sense of the testimony of scripture. Even so, there may be debate about whether or not this statement is appropriate in relation to scripture and the church’s faith.

However, I wish to make a separate point. It is fallacious to reject an idea or statement because of who said it, rather than whether it accords with what is right and true. Christians do this far too much. They dismiss something because of who said it rather than think through what was said, which is the harder task.

Two Strange Words for Reading Scripture

This year I retired as a teacher at a Christian high school nearby. I taught a course called Hermeneutics. It is an unusual word and it makes people pause and wonder. They want to ask me what it means but are hesitant to do so. The definition that I taught my students, I took from Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart, who have an accessible book on the subject with the title, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth. According to Fee, hermeneutics is “The art and science of interpretation.” We are talking about the interpretation of texts here. Biblical hermeneutics then, is the art and science of the interpretation of the texts of the Bible.

One of the problems for hermeneutics is another unusual word, distanciation. I told my students to identify the root of this word in order to remember what it means. Distanciation (used in the context of biblical hermeneutics) refers to the distance between the biblical texts and us. To be more explicit, there is the distance of time, culture, society, language, and so on. It is easy to ignore the historical reality of scripture and jump from where we are today back to scripture and read our own time, culture, society, language, etc., onto the texts. This is an anachronistic error—reading our time back onto scripture and deciding what it means based on that.

It is not that scripture is quiet for us in our modern world. Rather, what we want is to hear the words of scripture, with the church, in their own right. Our interest as Christians is to listen to the scripture speak to us in its own time and place, instead of trying to push our time and place onto scripture. The Word of God addresses us first, before we address it with our questions and troubles. We must listen to scripture with the church but that is worth more reflection in another blog.

Last week I had lunch with a colleague and friend named David Noe who is a professor and lover of the classics. David is dedicated to helping the church and Christians understand the Greco-Roman world that intersected with the early church. To do this he has started a podcast at adnavseam.podbean.com.  I listened to it. David and his co-host Jeff Winkle make learning about the classical world in relationship to the Bible fun, witty, and intelligent. Give them a listen.

Calls to Obedience

The worship liturgy of Providence Orthodox Presbyterian Church includes something called The Call to Obedience. Here is a brief explanation of it. In the Reformed tradition, the reading of the Law was placed before and after the General Confession of Sin; depending on the church it could have been used in both locations of the service, or in one place or the other. Before the Confession, the Law functions to reveal our need to confess our sin and have faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior from God’s judgment for sin. It is the position of the Law, after the congregation’s Confession of Sin, and after the minister’s pronouncement of the Declaration of Pardon by faith in Jesus Christ, that is most notably Reformed. This fits with our theology of the third use of the Law—the Law also shows us how to live in gratitude for our salvation in Jesus Christ. The understanding of the Law here is broad and it includes the commandments of Jesus and the injunctions of the Apostles in their epistles to the churches.

From time to time, one of our Calls to Obedience from our worship will be posted here, such as this one:

Beloved in Christ…

In scripture we hear, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Jesus said, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.”  The church is told to have the same love, being in full accord and of one mind, which is yours in Christ Jesus who emptied himself in love for us.  And If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Christian love is an un-claiming love.  By this, I mean it does not claim for itself. It is a love that considers what is truly good for those around us; we are to love others for their sake.  We do not love others because they love us, or will do what we want them to do, or because they do the right thing.  This is not the love of God who showed his love for us while we were yet sinners.  We are to love with the love of God. Now the church is the breeding ground for such love.  We do not breed it on our own.  As we practice this love with each other together in the church, we learn what this love is, it is known and grows and takes form.  As it is bred here among us, we take it out into the world and love even those who do not love us or love God.

Here I Am

Not long ago I read this story about Maya Angelou in a book by Frederick Buechner. Given the current anger and angst about racial disparities and unequal treatment, it is most apropos. He tells the story of Maya Angelou whom he met on several occasions. He describes her as “a large woman about [Buechner’s] height, black, beautiful, and so full of energy you can warm your hands in front of her.” He includes a remarkable encounter after one of her lectures. Here it is.

The most moving part of my time at Trinity happened after one of Maya’s lectures. There had been a number of questions and one person asked her a question about racism—has it gotten better, has it gotten worse, is it better in one place in the West Coast than the East Coast? And she had said, “Let me tell you a story.” She said she had been in the San Francisco Bay area fifteen years or so before to do a public television program on African art, and out of the blue one day she got a telephone call from a white man who told her that he had a collection of a certain kind of African statue and perhaps she would like to come over and look at them. So she went over and they were wonderful examples of whatever form of African art they were, and he lent them to her and she used them in ways that pleased him. Through this experience, they became great friends. She went to his house for dinner a number of times, got to know his wife, and Maya had them over to her place for dinner, and they were terrific pals. She said it had been one of the bright spots during her time there, and then the public television show was over and she went back to wherever it was she went. Time went by and about four or five years later she returned to the Bay Area, this time for a longer period of time. So right away she called up her friend, who told her he’d be delighted to see her again. He said, “Let me just catch you up on what I’ve been doing since I saw you last. I have been in Europe working on the problem with American troops over there. It’s not an easy row for them to hoe in a way,” he said, “and it’s especially hard for the black troops for obvious reasons. There aren’t too many blacks over there, but our boys are also having a hard---“ She interrupted him. “What did you say?” “I said, in Europe it’s especially hard for the black troops, and that our boys are also---“ What did you say?” She interrupted him again, she told us, because she wanted him to hear it. So again, “Well, the black troops…” and then he got it. “Oh my God! What have I said to you, of all people? The black troops…our boys. I’m so embarrassed I simply have to stop talking. I’m going to hang up. To say this to you, of all people.” And Maya had said, “No, don’t. Don’t hang up. This is just the time we need to talk. This is what racism is beneath the level of liberal utterance and superficial friendship, the sort of deeply rooted sense of we and they, the whites, the blacks, the browns, the whatever it is.” So they finished off their conversation agreeing that they would meet. Then she said after that she had tried to call him innumerable times and left messages of one kind or another, and there was never any response at all.

She told us that was the end, and when she had finished that question and answer time, she had been obviously very moved and sort of shaken by it. The next day she had started her lecture reflecting on this story about racism, saying, “As I left the room yesterday, a man stood up and said, “Here I am!”

No sooner had these words left her lips when this small, bearded, white Episcopal clergyman suddenly stood up in our midst a few rows behind me and walked down the aisle, up onto the platform, and put his arms around her. He was, of course, her friend who had been too embarrassed to talk to her anymore. And she cried and he cried and all of us cried because we just got a glimpse of the kingdom of God. So moving. So gorgeous.

This story about reconciliation reminded me of the words of the Lord in the book of Isaiah. The Lord speaks of the day of his salvation for a people who had turned against him and become sinful and oppressed. The Lord will declare, “Here I am,” and the people will know that it is the Lord who speaks to them (Isaiah 52:6). These words in Isaiah are part of a magnificent story of people being reconciled to God. This is precisely what God accomplishes in Jesus Christ. As II Corinthians 5:18 says, “Through Christ, God reconciled us to himself.” God’s purpose is reconciliation with him and with each other, not a we-versus-them kind of standoff. In all the debate about black/white and racism in society, it is easy to lose sight of God’s purpose to reconcile us to himself and to each other.  

The New Life of Christ

Our world is full of dreams of a new life. Honestly, most of them leave me dry and flat, like the transhumanist future talk of digital platforms, plasticity of embodiment, technological singularity and the Marxist utopian vision of social sameness, means of production and super abundance of material goods. Furthermore, they demand faith grounded in some kind of human development that must pull itself out of death and futility into the utopian world. It requires a leap to believe that those who are mortally wounded and enmeshed in the ruin of our existence will make for ourselves a fundamentally new life.

The Bible testifies to the new life we receive by the resurrection of Jesus Christ with vines, fruitfulness, flowers, trees, bubbling water, a wedding, young children, the dawning of a new day and harmonious nature. We find stories, metaphors and pictures in scripture that are joyful and exuberant—truly fitting for new life springing forth in an old world of sin and death.

This is how Isaiah speaks of the new life that comes from God:

“They shall not labor in vain,

or bear children for calamity,

for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord,

and their descendants with them.

Before they call I will answer;

while they are yet speaking I will hear.

The wolf and the lamb shall graze together:

the lion shall eat straw like the ox,

and dust shall be the serpent’s food

They shall not hurt or destroy

in all my holy mountain,”

says the Lord. (Is. 65:23-25)

John the Apostle speaks, in a beautiful text in the Book of Revelation, of this new life shown to him:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Rev. 21:1-4)

This new life of God’s salvation is created for us by Jesus Christ and it is the subject of the story of the wedding at Cana in the Gospel of John (John 2:1-11). In the Old Testament and other Jewish writings, wine signified the new life of God’s salvation. At the wedding, Jesus created an extravagant abundance of wine—far beyond what was needed at the wedding.

Irenaeus was a bishop in Lyon, France in the second century after Christ. He picked up on the exuberance of this new life gained for us by Jesus Christ. Here is one of his passages that practically explodes with this life:

“The days will come, in which vines shall grow, each having ten thousand branches, and in each branch ten thousand twigs, and in each true twig ten thousand shoots, and in each one of the shoots ten thousand clusters, and on every one of the clusters ten thousand grapes, and every grape when pressed will give five and twenty metretes [one metretes is about 37 liters] of wine. And when any one of the saints shall lay hold of a cluster, another shall cry out, ‘I am a better cluster, take me; bless the Lord through me.’” (Against Heresies, Book V)

As the church celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ, while death is still present in this world, we rejoice in the exuberant, vivacious new life he gains for us.

Reflections During a Pandemic

Sometimes I read books that fit the occasion. One time I read Moby Dick on a cruise with my wife’s family. Shut down by the Coronavirus I decided to read The Plague by Albert Camus. It is a fictional story of a port city called Oran set in Algeria that suddenly is taken by the bubonic plague. Throughout the novel there are different responses to living in the existence of death. One of them in particular caught my attention. Here is the paragraph:

In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn’t a thing made to man’s measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn’t always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven’t taken their precautions. Our townsfolk were no more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.

Camus considered religious belief absurd, nevertheless what he says here is illuminating, even for us Christians. It is a frame of literature to reflect upon. Human society today does not see itself caught up in something bigger than itself; something which we cannot control or from which we cannot extricate ourselves. But then, all of a sudden, for a few days or maybe for a few weeks, we have a different perspective because of the pandemic and we have a deep feeling of uncertainty, panic and anxiety. The fog blows away and it dawns on us we are not as free as we thought we were. This virus can shut us down and after this another one and another one. Then, just as suddenly, our confidence in ourselves returns as we hear about heroic efforts and new vaccines. We lose our modesty as Camus says. Nor do we give thanks to God for providing us with the skill and knowledge to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

We are in that time of the year when Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Not only does God care for his creation, he also frees the prisoners—those who are caught up with the powers of this world. Our freedom comes through Jesus Christ and so this Easter we lift our praise to God.

Jesus Christ is risen;

He is risen indeed.

Sing Unto the Lord

 Worship has become loud, as in ear-splitting. A recent story in the Wall Street Journal tells why people are wearing earplugs in worship. The description says it all, “Congregations crank up the music to ear-splitting volume; ‘They were going after rock concert levels,’” (January 25, 2019). Those interviewed for the story were not criticizing the music. The problem was their ears’ inability to tolerate the noise level.

It made me think of the Reformers who wrote new church music to help congregations sing praise to God. Besides Martin Luther, the Reformed, such as Martin Bucer and the brothers Thomas and Ambrosius Blarer, took a large lead in the production of collections of praises for the churches to sing. Their interest was in the congregation actually singing its praise to God instead of watching trained choirs do it for them.

Also, I recall the work of the prolific translator, Catherine Winkworth. She lived in the 19th century and translated many German chorale hymns into English—over 400 texts. Some of her work is in our hymnal, such as  Praise to the Lord, the Almighty and Now Thank We All Our God. She was also an author of many hymns. As with most translators, her versions of the hymn texts have not been appreciated by all.  Yet the chorale style she adroitly promoted enabled the church to do two things; sing together and sing beautifully. Singing is a congregational activity and it is good to offer our praise to God delightfully and as well as we can.

Another person who came to mind was John Wesley. He offered five rules for singing. Here they are:

I.         Sing all. See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up and you will find a blessing.

II.       Sing lustily, and with a good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of it being heard, then when you sing the songs of Satan (by which I think he means crass pop songs).

III.     Sing modestly. Do not bawl, as to be heard above, or distinct from, the rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy the harmony; but strive to unite your voices together, so as to make one clear melodious sound.

IV.    Sing in time. Whatever time is sung, be sure to keep with it. Do not run before, not stay behind it; but attend closely to the leading voices, and move therewith as exactly as you can. And take care you sing not too slow. This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from among us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first.

V.      Above all, sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing Him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this, attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve of here, and reward when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.

 Good advice for an age of entertainment and ear-splitting music.

Grace and Peace

Jeffrey Wilson

Thanks Be to God...for the Church

When I make my morning prayers, I always include the general prayer of thanksgiving from the Book of Common Prayer. It is a beautiful prayer in form and content. Being a Presbyterian I take a certain liberty with the prayer and add my own personal thanksgivings to it. These vary during the week but one cause for my thanksgiving, which I always include, is the church.

“Almighty God, most merciful Father, we thine unworthy servants [I pray with the plural subject] do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and mercy to us and to all people; we thank thee for our creation, preservation and all the blessings of this life [at this point in the prayer I list a number of personal reasons for my thanksgiving]; but above all we thank you for the inestimable love for the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace, for the hope of glory, and for the church….”

 I add the church to those things perpetually mentioned in the prayer of thanksgiving. It could be argued that this is a superfluous addition because the congregation of Christ’s people is assumed in the prayer, but I make a special reference to it anyway. As a person who was raised in the Presbyterian Church and as a minister for some 30 years now, my gratitude to God for creating the church and my love for it has continued to grow. Am I ignorant of the problems in the church, the clergy abuses, the history of its power aligned with the state for inquisitions and crusades, and its lust for cultural popularity and a relevance defined by the world? No, I am not. Have I somehow avoided the maliciousness and conflicts within the church? No, I have not. I know well the sin and weakness of Christians and the church and it deeply saddens me whenever it manifests itself. In my morning prayer, I also pray the general prayer of confession for sin and list my own personal sins along with the general sin of us all. Nevertheless, I am thankful to God for the church, as imperfect as it is.

God created the Christian church to be in this world, and it is baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in order to confess that Jesus Christ is God and the Savior of the world. As such, it is full of the blessing of God. Providence Orthodox Presbyterian Church is growing in the Detroit metropolitan area with all kinds of people. Some of these people were raised in Reformed churches, but many others have come to us after dropping out of the church-at-large because they experienced its failures. In some cases, they grew tired of the superficiality and the foolishness they found in it.  Others came to us with no real experience of the church and yet they came with an openness to God. Each person has his or her own story. What they have found is the presence of God, the ministry of his Word and his salvation that has intruded into this world through Jesus Christ and overcomes the sin that is in our culture, in the church and in ourselves.

With great thanksgiving to God it is my hope to offer, from time to time, pastoral thoughts on the church with the intention of helping those who are Christians and those who need encouragement to join Christ’s people, to give thanks to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirt.

Blessing in Christ,

Jeffrey Wilson



We Must Change

Tomorrow we will gather to worship God with the church. It is a rather ordinary looking bunch; men, women and children, old and young, who are from different places and different cultures; a bit cosmopolitan, with those who are of Sri Lankan, African American, Chilean, Korean, Polish, and Anglo-Saxon heritages.  We do many of the same activities everyone else does in our society. An early Christian letter written by an unknown author famously describes it this way, “Christians cannot be distinguished from the rest of the human race by country or language or customs. They do not live in cities of their own; they do not use a peculiar form of speech.” In one way, we Christians are fully recognizable in our culture. Perhaps the most obvious is the English language we speak. It has the same grammar—more or less—and idioms that are generally known in the United States. A Christian may say “What’s up?” or “A day late and a dollar short” and only the most recent immigrants are perplexed. The same is true for the songs we sing in the church and the musical patterns they contain which are familiar in our western culture. Christianity can take its place in societies and cultures with relative ease.

It has been observed that Christianity is highly adaptable to the various cultures of this world. One can find Christian congregations in nearly every culture, even the ones that outlaw Christianity. The Christian faith reaches across class boundaries, political affiliations, race and education. However, that is not the end of it for the followers of Jesus Christ. We do not just ride along with the culture imitating it. There is transformation. When someone becomes a Christian they must change. Nothing will remain the same anymore. It is difficult to comprehend this when the world around us says we are fine just the way we are. This is a deceptive message because while we may agree with what the world tells us, we do want to change in some ways; like our weight, knowledge, relationships, and so on. We are not as “fine” as we think we are. In fact we have become twisted and corrupted forms of what God created us to be. Jesus Christ transforms his followers from what we were into God’s good and holy purpose for us.

How then do we explain the adaptability and the transformation of Christianity? We explain it with Jesus Christ. Scripture bears witness that he is the eternal God who became man and dwelt among us. Without changing his divinity he assumed our humanity in all its aspects; physical, spiritual, cultural and everything else. He adapted himself to our human life, but he did not do this to affirm it the way it is and allow us to remain what we have been. Christ assumed our humanity in order to transform it—everything about it. This would include the thoughts, words, deeds and desires of our own person. Jesus Christ also transforms our moral behavior, sexual desires and relationships with others. Beyond ourselves it extends to human culture like language, music, education, and politics. Christ’s transformation even extends to the church and its worship. Christ transforms Christian worship from merely adapting to the forms and content of cultures to having its own distinct character. Those who follow Jesus Christ must be changed personally, morally, culturally and religiously. After asserting the adaptability of Christians to the culture, the Letter to Diogentus continues, “Yet, although they live in Greek and barbarian cities alike, as each man’s lot has been cast, and follow the customs of the country in clothing and food and other matters of daily living, at the same time they give proof of the remarkable and admittedly extraordinary constitution of their own commonwealth. They live in their own countries, but only as aliens.”

Grace and Peace

Jeffrey Wilson