“‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news’.” (1:15)
The last part of yesterday’s comtemplation was to explain that repentance means to lessen your religious works, and then to pay attention to God’s sovereignty. Maybe some people could wonder why. Does it make sense to reduce religious works, when we are needed to get together more often and evangeliz to the end of the world? And basically why does such reduction mean repentance?
The most misunderstood thing in Christianity generally is that Christians are doing some works in God’s place. It is a non-sense. It is arrogance. We almost don’t have anything to do for God. More strictly speaking, there is none of those on earth. Because salvation, that is the most important thing for God, is totally an exclusive action. We should only take a close look at how salvation being made, and then after we realize what have happened, there is nothing else except praising Him. (doxology).
Of course, it is possible to say that we must get together more often to praise His salvation, and we should do world mission in order to praise Him. But in here we should take a close look at ourselves more honestly. Do we honestly praise His salvation? If so, we might try to learn more what God’s salvation means. This could be repentance. In church life for today’s Christians, is salvation from God regarded as an importanct topic? No, do we actually pay attention even to knowing God? Except small numbers of people, most people do not have any attention to the kingdom of God and His salvation. Of course they use lexicon “salvation”, but it became a dogmatic word, not eschatological event, with open-minded meaning for the future life. The words like God, salvation, glory, sovereignty are dead in the church. I have witnessed that not many preaching from many pulpits are having done for the kingdom of God often.
Maybe some people could ask if we should liquidate our churches. That is not what I mean. Since our religious enthusiam is far from God’s sovereignty, it might not make any serious problems, even though we reduce a lot. Of course materialistic and human resources could be affected. But such things are not related with the kingdom of God. Basically speaking, church should be satisfied as a minority community just like yeast in flour. Without flour if yeast only exists, the relation between flour and yeast might be collapsed. It might be difficult to say decisively, but evangelizing a certain people had not had direct connection with the kingdom of God when we look through history. Latin churches after Emperor Constantinus, European churches during the middle age, Russian Churches before the Red Revolution, could not be our role models.
The problem is what Christianity feels very nervous about being remained as minority. As long as an individual church or the assembly of church consider growth as their priority, it is impossible for repentance basically. This concept applies to our daily lives in the same way. When economic graph shows downsizing, if people might be so anxious that their life could be ruined, it would be impossible for Korea to repent seriously. She could not be a country for justice and peace.
There is none to be more foolish than to waste our spiritual energy meaninglessly. But come to think of it, on the other hand, the reason to waste our spiritual energy meaninglessly is the fact that basically we do not repent. It could mean that we do not pay attention to the kingdom of God, but only to the church as an organization.
Lord, give us a spirit of repentance not to waste our lives and also our spiritual energy. Amen.
The last part of yesterday’s comtemplation was to explain that repentance means to lessen your religious works, and then to pay attention to God’s sovereignty. Maybe some people could wonder why. Does it make sense to reduce religious works, when we are needed to get together more often and evangeliz to the end of the world? And basically why does such reduction mean repentance?
The most misunderstood thing in Christianity generally is that Christians are doing some works in God’s place. It is a non-sense. It is arrogance. We almost don’t have anything to do for God. More strictly speaking, there is none of those on earth. Because salvation, that is the most important thing for God, is totally an exclusive action. We should only take a close look at how salvation being made, and then after we realize what have happened, there is nothing else except praising Him. (doxology).
Of course, it is possible to say that we must get together more often to praise His salvation, and we should do world mission in order to praise Him. But in here we should take a close look at ourselves more honestly. Do we honestly praise His salvation? If so, we might try to learn more what God’s salvation means. This could be repentance. In church life for today’s Christians, is salvation from God regarded as an importanct topic? No, do we actually pay attention even to knowing God? Except small numbers of people, most people do not have any attention to the kingdom of God and His salvation. Of course they use lexicon “salvation”, but it became a dogmatic word, not eschatological event, with open-minded meaning for the future life. The words like God, salvation, glory, sovereignty are dead in the church. I have witnessed that not many preaching from many pulpits are having done for the kingdom of God often.
Maybe some people could ask if we should liquidate our churches. That is not what I mean. Since our religious enthusiam is far from God’s sovereignty, it might not make any serious problems, even though we reduce a lot. Of course materialistic and human resources could be affected. But such things are not related with the kingdom of God. Basically speaking, church should be satisfied as a minority community just like yeast in flour. Without flour if yeast only exists, the relation between flour and yeast might be collapsed. It might be difficult to say decisively, but evangelizing a certain people had not had direct connection with the kingdom of God when we look through history. Latin churches after Emperor Constantinus, European churches during the middle age, Russian Churches before the Red Revolution, could not be our role models.
The problem is what Christianity feels very nervous about being remained as minority. As long as an individual church or the assembly of church consider growth as their priority, it is impossible for repentance basically. This concept applies to our daily lives in the same way. When economic graph shows downsizing, if people might be so anxious that their life could be ruined, it would be impossible for Korea to repent seriously. She could not be a country for justice and peace.
There is none to be more foolish than to waste our spiritual energy meaninglessly. But come to think of it, on the other hand, the reason to waste our spiritual energy meaninglessly is the fact that basically we do not repent. It could mean that we do not pay attention to the kingdom of God, but only to the church as an organization.
Lord, give us a spirit of repentance not to waste our lives and also our spiritual energy. Amen.
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