Philippians 3:10
"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death."
The Cross of Christ is the central act, even the central message of this revolution.
Only when we focus on the "man of sorrows, familiar with suffering." can we truly change the world around us.
Only by proclaiming the Cross of Christ can we faithfully present Christ to the world. We must preach accomplished salvation if we are to be truly radical for Jesus Christ.
As Bonhoeffer said in the Cost of Discipleship, Grace without the Cross is a useless religion not worth preaching. IT is a plague across our land, and it must be refuted, simply with the message of the Cross.
Only when we proclaim the words of Isaiah will we see true change.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
The revolution must be based on a call to repentance and faith, centered upon the redemptive substitutionary death of Christ on the Cross, not on a hope or prosperity Gospel. We will not change the world preaching the Kingdom of God (as important as the kingdom is). We will not change the world preaching the ability of the cross to save.n We can only change the world with the message of the Cross.
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The Vision?
The vision is Jesus: obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.
The vision is an army of young people.
You see bones? They are an army.
And they are free from materialism. They laugh at the markets.
They hardly care! They wear clothes like costumes:
to show and to tell, but never to hide.
They know the meaning of the Matrix; the way the West was won.
They are mobile like the wind; they belong to the nations.
They need no passport.
People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free, yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.
What is the vision?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.
It makes children laugh and adults break and cry.
It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers choose to lose that they might win, one day
the great "Well done" of faithful sons and daughters.
Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night.
They don't need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards
and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!"
And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history shaping
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is screaming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing...
This is the sound of the underground.
And the army is disciplined.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrades at arms.
The tattoo on their backs boasts "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain."
Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their eyes.
Winners. Martyrs. Who can stop them?
Can failure succeed? Can fear scare them or death kill them?
And this generation prays like a dying man with groans beyond
talking, with warrior cries, sulphuric tears
Waiting. Watching: 24 - 7 - 365.
Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules.
Shaking mediocrity from its cozy little hide.
Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs,
laughing at labels, fasting essentials.
The advertisers cannot mold them.
Hollywood cannot hold them.
Peer-pressure is powerless
to shake their resolve
Material clothes matter not
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives,
swap seats with the man on death row;
guilty as hell.
A throne for an electric chair.
With blood and sweat and many tears,
with sleepless nights and fruitless days,
they pray as if it all depends on God
and live as if it all depends on them.
Their words make demons scream in shopping malls.
Don't you hear them coming?
Here come the frightened and forgotten, with fire in their eyes.
Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.
And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history shaping
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is screaming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing...
This is the sound of the underground.
2 comments:
See? This is what I mean. A Systematic approach to the significance of the cross can isolate it from the rest of God's work and lead you to compartmentalize. I appreciate what you're saying, but you've sequestered the cross from the rest of Jesus' work. Of course it is emblematic of all that He did, but your comment about the kingdom and the cross points to a dissection. This is why I advocate Biblical Theology. It is an organic process that flows from an organic reading of the text(s).
Now, this dissection is probably what you're objecting to - the kingdom without a cross is vain - but you can't fix a problem by becoming its antithesis. Go back, and look this issue over again in the text, and ask the question, "How are the cross and the kingdom related?" (Remember: you don't know the answer to the question. You have to find it by reading it over and over and over...)
I think you are right up to a point. It is dangerous to dichotomize the work of Christ in life from the work of Christ in death. That said, the life of Christ is an example to us, but the death of Christ redeems us.
That was the point i was attempting to make. that at the Cross, redemption was accomplished and applied.
~tim
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