Hatred Dissolves at the Cross

This is our fourth time highlighting the writing of Mel Wild, senior pastor at Cornerstone Church and director of Radiant School of Ministry, both based in Wisconsin USA. Clicking the title which follows takes you to where this first appeared.

Hatred Died

Eph.2:14-16 TPT
Our reconciling “Peace” is Jesus! He has made Jew and non-Jew one in Christ. By dying as our sacrifice, he has broken down every wall of prejudice that separated us and has now made us equal through our union with Christ. Ethnic hatred has been dissolved by the crucifixion of his precious body on the cross. The legal code that stood condemning every one of us has now been repealed by his command. His triune essence has made peace between us by starting over—forming one new race of humanity, Jews and non-Jews fused together in himself!
Two have now become one, and we live restored to God and reconciled in the body of Christ. Through his crucifixion, hatred died.

Hatred died with Christ. This is good news!

This reality always blows my mind in light of our human experience.  Yes, the immediate context here is about Jews and Gentiles, but that includes all non-Jews….in other words, the rest of humanity.

Two things strike me here. The first I already mentioned, that all ethnic prejudice, racial differences, and hatred have been dissolved by the Cross.

Think about that for a moment.

The second is that the “legal code,” or the Law, condemned everyone. So our moralizing and virtue-signaling only shows how ignorant we truly are.

We’ll talk about that another time.

“His triune essence has made peace between us by starting over—forming one new race of humanity…”, meaning all old ways of describing ourselves are irrelevant and obsolete in light of Christ.

I think it was Bernard of Clairvaux who said, “To know God is to love Him.” Of course, he was just saying what John said:

^{NIV.I John.4.7} Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  

Indeed, it cannot be any other way. As John clarified in the negative, to not love God only means that, while you may have experienced some form of Christian religion,  you’ve never actually encountered Him.

To say it another way, there’s no such thing as knowing Christ and not loving Him…and not loving others.

So, for a Jesus follower to make a distinction between ethnicity, or race, or just to hate any human being, is to be suffering from a serious identity dysfunction.

And in loving others, you begin to see the infinite value in all people, and that’s a staggering thought, as  C.S. Lewis pointed out so well in his book, “The Weight of Glory”:

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor.

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.

It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.

There are no ordinary people.

You have never talked to a mere mortal.

Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn.

We must play.

But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.

And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.” – C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (reprint, HarperOne, 2001), pp. 45-46.

Two things here…

“Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.” Yes, there are petty things like ethnic hatred and prejudice in nations and cultures, but that’s not who you are.

“All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.” This point haunts me daily. Do I see my interactions with people in this light?

I think when we stand before God, He will ask us one critical question: “Did you learn how to love?” That will be the only thing that will matter then.

I want to be able to answer that question in the affirmative now. That’s my mission, but I must confess, I fail at it considerably.

Beloved, there is no other version of Christianity; only man-fabricated religions created by people who have not known Love.

^{NIV.1 John.4.19} We love because he first loved us. ²⁰Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.

Helped a Needy Person: Check

If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?  I John 3:17
 

Each month we refer back to the same month of the previous year to see what various writers we introduced here are currently thinking about.  This one is from Dwight L. MacPherson who blogs at Son of a Parson Ministries with something you just might want to forward to others.  To read this at source, click the title below.

Checking the Box Doesn’t Cut It

One of my childhood buddies shared a story with me about his church that punched me in the gut. It moved my heart. It convicted me. It made me think. So I’ve decided to share it with you…

My friend told me that at an evening service, the pastor asked every church member to write a need they’ve been praying about along with their name and phone number on a piece of paper. The pastor then had the members come to the altar and leave their written needs there. Then, at the conclusion of the sermon, he told the congregation to go to the altar and take someone else’s need… and meet it.

Wow.

One problem I’ve had with the Church is that I don’t think we do enough to meet the needs of our congregations. Sure, we anoint them, pray with them, but how often do we directly meet their needs? As a former church administrative assistant, Rebecca can attest to the fact that church offices are usually jam-packed with people who have very real and pressing needs. So this made me wonder… how often are church offices jam-packed with people desiring to meet the needs of others?

Feeling convicted yet? I know I am.

Thinking of my buddy’s story, I looked around at the congregation at our home church. I saw two men seated a couple of feet apart. I wondered… I could imagine one man crying out to God desperately for $50 to fill his gas tank for work the next week. The man beside him I imagined calling out to God asking Him how he could use the finances God had blessed him with to be a blessing to others.

The Bible tells us that the early Church met the needs of their members internally. Acts 2:44, for example, tells us, “And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had.” Now before anyone draws from their extensive church history knowledge to tell me that the Jerusalem church was basically a commune due to persecution, my point still stands. The Church didn’t direct their Christian brothers and sisters to secular public programs, or simply give them a bag of groceries or gas voucher so they could check off a box for helping the needy. No, they genuinely helped one another and made sure everyone’s needs were met. Are we honestly doing this today?

So what’s the answer for the modern Church? Well, I think my buddy’s pastor has the right idea. We need to be more open with our brothers and sisters that we see Sundays and Wednesday nights. This requires for us to be intentional, willing to go out of our way to help others, and open to hear one another’s needs without judging them. I think this would be much easier in small churches, but in big churches, it could be tough. I love the idea of small groups meeting in homes during the week. I think this gives us a much better opportunity to cultivate healthy, “real” relationships. I think it could also give us wonderful opportunities to use our God-given resources and talents to help others. The thing is, it’s hard, and it can be downright messy. The question is: are we truly willing to roll up our sleeves and help our brothers and sisters in need?

In Christ’s perfect love,

Dwight

The Parson