A Wednesday Word | 6/23/2021
“Many people today assume that Christianity is one or more of these things – a religion, a moral system, a philosophy. In other words, they assume that Christianity is about advice. But it wasn’t and isn’t. Christianity is, simply, good news. It is the news that something has happened as a result of which the world is a different place.”
-N.T. Wright, Simply Good News: Why the Gospel is News and What Makes it Good
As Paul outlines in the flowing poetry of Ephesians 1:3-14, the Gospel message is good news in a world longing for it. It’s not a system, akin to many others in our world, whereby we as humans work out a way to right relationship to God; it’s not a set of ideas we come to believe on our way to enlightenment. It is a person, a Christ, a Savior of mankind, whose life, death, and resurrection set right all that has gone wrong in our world. This happens for us individually, as Christ brings forgiveness for all that we have done and left undone, but it doesn’t stop there: it happens for the entire cosmos, where all things become restored into the New. The world has been fundamentally changed - do you have eyes to see it?
-CL
Prayer: Lord, enlighten the eyes of my heart, that I may begin to see everything--my whole life and the world around me--as being redeemed and restored by You. Teach me to live with this new lens on life. Amen.