Sometimes I daydream that, in 2000 years of church history, we should have perfected this thing of being Christians, should have all the essentials buttoned up, no major issues left, all of us living in near perfect unity, the Gospel penetrating the very last areas of outreach, everybody ready for the near return of Jesus. Then I’m shaken awake to the ugly ecclesiastical mess around us. The truth is, globally, we aren’t even close to fulfilling the prayer of Jesus! There’s much to be done. There’s still off-putting, hard to grasp, mystery surrounding who we are in Christ. That being true, just imagine how difficult it was for Jesus’ first disciples who were without what we now know.
Years later, after Paul’s powerful conversion on the road to Damascus, he was privileged to have been given insight to understand God’s plan of salvation. He was inspired by the Holy Spirit to teach what mysteries had been revealed to him. For example, here’s 2 Corinthians 5:21 from the Mirror Translation:
“This is the divine exchange; he who knew no sin embraced our perversion; he appeared to be without form; this was the mystery of God’s prophetic poetry. He was disguised in our distorted image and marred with our iniquities; he took our sorrow, our pain and shame and birthed his righteousness in us. He took our sins and we became his innocence.”
There, that settles it, right? No more questions! We’ve got it! If only! I think the main issue is that we’ve become convinced that knowledge unlocks everything, opens every door. In reality, it’s faith that does that. Faith in Jesus. To the world this is foolishness. But to us who believe, it is the power of God revealed in us – and that, that settles it. PD
