Beatitude

"Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." - With each beatitude the gulf is widened between the disciples and the people, their call to come forth from the people becomes increasingly manifest. By "mourning" Jesus, of course, means doing without what the world calls peace and prosperity: He means refusing to be in tune with the world or to accommodate oneself to its standards. Such men mourn for the world, for its guilt, its fate and its fortune. . . The world dreams of progress, of power and of the future, but the disciples meditate on the end, the last judgement, and the coming of the precious Kingdom. To such heights the world cannot rise. And so the disciples are strangers in the world, unwelcome guests and disturbers of the peace. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer (from The Cost of Discipleship)

Cheap Grace

More and more I find that the profession of Christ has become a profession of culture. That the Lord that is revealed in the Bible is being softened by men through their own claim to fames. The name of God, "The I Am," which is so revered by the Jews, and which name Jesus holds the claim to, is reduced to mere iconic culture. In an effort to make the "Gospel" more appealing, more listenable, and more acceptable, men have lowered the standard that God himself set; not just by taking his name down to our level, but taking his holiness down to human level, taking his sovereignty down to human level. We have turned aside from the true and real God of the Bible, even Jesus, and replaced Him with a Jesus and a gospel that is received by all. But, we should be weary about the popularity of Jesus' name. He himself said that he would be hated of all men. Hated! Not just disliked. The reality is that the more our church system and its leaders have made Christ, the gospel and God appealing to men the less of God their is in it.

But why has this happened? Perhaps it is as John Macarthur states, "People like the idea of believing in God, they even applaud it, as long as it is not the God of the Bible. Because once you affirm the God of the Bible, you get the God of the Bible. You get the law of the God of the Bible, you get the commandments of the God of the Bible, you get the morrality of the God of the Bible, you get the justice of the God of the Bible, you get the righteousness of the God of the Bible, and you get the punishment of the God of the Bible. . . . . But men love their sin! And many religions will not infringe upon that. Only the God of the Bible."

Many church institution and its leaders have so desired the acceptance of the world that the things stated by John Macarthur have slowly been escorted out the door. We are no longer under the law, pastors say. But this is really a twisting of scripture. We are not under the "Old" law, but the "new" one which is Christ, and he puts the old law on our hearts as the spirit convicts us. Morality has deteriorated in the church. This is affectuated by the term Cheap Grace, which is really cheap salvation. That it wasn't that big of a deal that Christ died for me, I'm not that bad. . . It has become more of an insurance than a way of life. But in 1 John 1:6 it says that, "If you say that you're in the light, but walk in darkness, you lie." That means that Christ becomes our everything, not just a tag along, culture accepted, icon. Even God's justice is diminished, because we exalt his Love far above all his other attributes, even though they all hold the same importance. We have disfigured the real God so much that it would be hard to tell the difference between a buddhist and a Christain. We have labeled Christ as an acceptor of all men. But he doesn't accept all men. He has come to seek and to save the lost, the sinner (that is, the sinner that admits he's a sinner). What is he saving them from? Death for sure, but in all reality, their sin. That is to say, he is transforming them from servants of sin to servants of God. For if they call themselves Christ's but still sin with an unrepentant heart, then their salvation is folly, and Christ's death is mocked.

What we need to do is to repent! To turn from the world, and not try to be accepted by the Great Majority. We need to preach the God of the Bible. We need to hold fast to His laws, His commands, His justice and His righteousness. For all else is vanity, and a pursuit which ends in death.