In step

Understanding the Cross

For reading & meditation: Romans 5:6-21

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (v. 8)

An ancient theologian - St. Augustine - suggested that "the answer to the mystery of the universe is God and the answer to the mystery of God is Christ." If this is so then I would like to make a further suggestion: the answer to the mystery of Christ is to be found in His sacrificial spirit, the supreme evidence of which is the cross.

We will never in our mortal state be able to grasp the full meaning of the cross. But what we do grasp gives us a clue to what lies in the heart of the Infinite.

Theologians often discuss the various theories of the atonement. Personally, I find myself accepting any theory of the atonement that makes the meaning of the cross more vital and clear. No theory seems to me big enough to fit the facts.

As Jesus broke the bars of the tomb and stepped out beyond them, so the fact of Jesus dying seems to transcend our most careful statements or form of words. To really understand the cross one must have an attitude of mind and heart that responds to its meaning.

I came across this: "To understand art one must have art within one; to understand music one must have music within one." I thought to myself, to understand the cross one must have a sacrificial spirit within one.

Those who profess to know Christ but live only for self will know something of the cross but will miss its real meaning. The cross is best understood not by an argument but by an attitude.

Prayer:
Father, I see that if I am to fully understand the cross I must have a sacrificial spirit within me. May I linger at Your cross until Your nature becomes my nature. Then seeing I shall see. In Jesus' Name. Amen.

One Long Search for God

For reading & meditation: Mark 7:8-23

"For from within, out of mens hearts, come evil thoughts ..." (v. 21)

We need to be reminded that there is in life a dark and terrible problem - the problem of evil.

Herbert Spencer in Natural Law in the Spiritual World defines physical life as "inward correspondence with outward environment." When we take in food, air and water, we live. When we don't, we die. There must be a response to our environment.

But there is also a spiritual environment to which we must respond, and when we are in correspondence with God we live spiritually. The facts of life fairly faced proclaim with heart-breaking obviousness that human beings are out of touch with their spiritual environment.

To be out of touch with God means, inevitably, that we will be out of touch with ourselves and with others. But the history of humanity is, as one historian put it, "one long search for God."

We stand beside our altars, we breathe our prayers, we make our vows, we repeat our ceremonies, we crave with inexpressible yearnings of the inmost heart, we long for fellowship with God. Yet something dark, dreadful, and sinister stands between us and God.

We realize God is pure, and because we are conscious of our impurity we hardly dare ask for fellowship with Him. We are separated and guilty. The object of all religions is to bring those who long for fellowship with God into correspondence with Him. But how is that achieved?

Christianity says it can be done only through the cross. Other religions point to other ways, and claim their way is as valid as the Christian way. But God says the cross is the only way.

Prayer:
O God my Father, what way could You have dealt with my sins except through the cross? My sins needed something more than disinfecting; they needed incinerating. In the flames of Calvary that is what happened. Now I am free. And how! Amen.

At-One-Ment

For reading & meditation: Romans 3:21-31

"God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood." (v. 25)

Herbert Spencer, whom we quoted earlier, wrote: "The task of religion is at-one-ment: atonement. If it fails to do this it fails at the vital point." Its ritual may be beautiful, its sanctions may be ancient, its precepts may be good, but if it fails to bring men and women into correspondence with God it fails vitally and irretrievably.

All else is useless, for if the problem of evil is ignored or passed over, we are like the person who dreams about and plans next year's happiness while an incurable disease is eating at his vitals.

The wonderful distinctive of Christianity is this - Jesus Christ has done something about the problem of being out of correspondence with God.

He puts the hand of a penitent sinner into the hand of a pardoning God. Because of the nature of the problem - the problem of evil - no other solution is possible. Salvation is a task which only God could engineer. As one theologian puts it: "It is a task worthy of God."

The ancient Greek playwrights used to warn their students that when writing a tragedy they should not bring a god onto the stage unless there was an entanglement worthy of a god. The presence of evil in this world, I suggest, presents an entanglement worthy of God. But it is no mere stage affair.

It is a tragic fact. To deliver men and women from evil was a problem that challenged God's power and made the deepest claim upon His love. The cross is the answer. If we don't take God's way of salvation, then nothing else will do.

Prayer:
Father, I rejoice that You have brought me to Your way -t he only way. Help the millions who strive to earn their salvation see that the penalty for sin has been fully paid. And all they have to do is humbly receive. In Jesus' Name I pray. Amen.

An Unintentional Tribute

For reading & meditation: Matthew 27:32-44

"'He saved others,' they said, 'but he can't save himself!' " (v. 42)

What humiliation and shame our Lord endured for us on the cross of Calvary. Cicero, a Roman philosopher, said of crucifixion: "Far be the very name of a cross not only from the bodies of Roman citizens, but from their imaginations, eyes and ears." But He, our Lord, though sinless, was crucified on a cross.

Although His blood was flowing freely from wounds inflicted by the crown of thorns on His head, from His back that had been lacerated by cruel thongs, from His hands and feet through which He was skewered to the tree, yet He refused the deadening drug offered Him.

He underwent the ordeal with brain unclouded and with nerves unsoothed. The crowd who watched Him cried: "He saved others, but he can't save himself!"

But strange as it seems, that mocking phrase became the central truth of the gospel. He was saving others and therefore He could not save Himself. That is one of the greatest truths of life -if we are to save others we cannot save ourselves.

To quote Spencer again: "It is a great mystery," he says, "yet an everlasting fact, that goodness in all moral natures has the doom of bleeding upon it, allowing it to conquer only as it bleeds. All goodness conquers by a cross." This law of saving by self-giving runs through life.

Those who save themselves cannot save others, and those who save others cannot save themselves - cannot save themselves trouble, sorrow, hurts, disappointments, pain, and sometimes even death. This is a law of the universe, and it applies to God as much as it does to us.


Prayer: O God, I have seen this law at work in human nature but I never thought it was part of the divine nature. But where could it have come from other than You? The highest in mankind is the deepest in You. I am staggered by it, but I know it to be true. Thank You, dear Father. Amen.

The Ultimate Discovery

For reading & meditation: Mark 15:16-39

"... when the centurion ... saw how he died, he said, 'Surely this man was the Son of God!' " (v. 39)

I cannot believe that God would write a law of "saving by sacrifice" within our hearts and evade it Himself.

The psalmist asks: "Does he who formed the eye not see?" (Ps. 94:9). And Browning said: "He that created love, shall He not love?" We might add: "He that created sacrificial love, shall He not sacrifice"?

The old Chinese scholar was right who, after listening for the first time to a missionary telling the story of the loving sacrifice of God through His Son on the cross, turned to one of his pupils and said: "Didnt I tell you there ought to be a God like that?" The leaders of the world's religions stumble over this.

A leading Muslim said recently during a television debate: "A God who would stoop and suffer is not perfect." And a Hindu commented: "If Brahman would suffer He would be unhappy, and if He were unhappy He would be imperfect, and if He were imperfect He would not be God."

The cross spells out the message that God is prepared to take into Himself the suffering caused by sin and, indeed, to take on Himself the very sins of the ones He created. No other religion can conceive of such a thing.

The cross raised on Calvary is but a reflection of an inner cross lying in the heart of God. Through it we see that at the center of the universe is redeeming love. No greater discovery could be made or will be made than that - in earth or in heaven. It is the ultimate in discoveries.


Prayer: O Father, I see that if self-giving love is the meaning behind the cross, and the meaning of the universe, then it must be the meaning behind my life too. May the cross work itself out in all my relationships from this day forward. In Jesus' Name. Amen.

A Sacrificial Head

For reading & meditation: Luke 9:18-27

"For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it." (v. 24)

Suppose a tiny seed had a will of its own and decided to save itself by refusing to be buried. It would abide alone. It would save itself but would not save others. When it decided to be buried and die, then the result would be a golden harvest.

Take a mother: she goes down into the valley of the shadow of death to bring a child into the world. When the child becomes ill, a loving mother forgets herself and spends her strength to give everything she has to the child. The spirit of self-giving is the most beautiful thing in life. Through it life rises to the highest level.

"The extent of the elevation of an animal and of course any free moral agent," said Pascal, the great French Christian and philosopher, "can be infallibly measured"by the degree to which sacrificial love for others controls that being."

Here is a law by which life may be evaluated and judged. When the sacrificial spirit is absent from life, that life is of the lowest kind; where it is perfectly embodied, that life is highest on the scale of being.

Is this law to be found in God also? I believe it is. If this law holds true on earth but is reversed in relation to God, then laws are meaningless and the universe is without a Head.

Then the highest in mankind would be better than God. But such is not the case. God is not a disappointment. The cross shouts out to all who will hear that the universe has a sacrificial Head.

Prayer:
O Father, how could I know that there is an unseen cross lying in Your heart unless You had shown me by the outer cross raised up on Calvary? Such revelation is almost too much for me to comprehend. Yet it is true. My gratitude will just not go into words. Amen.

The Man of Galilee

For reading & meditation: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

"For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance ... that he was raised on the third day ..." (vv. 3-4)

What other world religion has at its heart such a glorious fact as our Lord's resurrection? Christianity is the only faith whose Founder died upon a cross, was buried for three days, and then returned from the dead.

There are voices in today's church trying to persuade us that the resurrection of Christ never took place - that our Lord did not rise from the dead in bodily form. "It is not necessary to believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ in order to be a Christian," says one modern-day religious teacher.

He goes on to claim: We may freely say that the bones of Jesus are still lying somewhere in the land of Israel." "I quite expect," says another religious writer, "that the bones of Jesus will be dug up one day."

And a few years ago, David Jenkins, the former Anglican bishop, shocked the Christian world, as you probably know, with the statement: I have not the slightest interest in a conjuring trick with bones.

In the British Museum in London there used to be a grim exhibit known as The Galilee Man," so called because the remains were found in the area surrounding Galilee.

I remember thinking to myself the first time I visited the British Museum and saw that the exhibit was captioned "The Galilee Man," how wonderful that the disinterred bones of the Galilee man are not the remains of the Man of Galilee.

Prayer:
Loving heavenly Father, help me understand even more deeply the truth of Your Son's resurrection, for such an important truth cannot be left to lie in the realm of uncertainty. Take my hand and lead me more deeply into this truth. In Jesus' Name. Amen.

A Basic Precondition

For reading & meditation: John 20:1-18

"They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)" (v. 9)


The late Bishop John Robinson stated: "The resurrection of the body of Christ is no essential belief for Christian people, and it would make no difference to their faith if the Lord's body had been flung into the Valley of Hinnom, like those of the malefactors, to disintegrate among the rotting corpses." Such a statement flies in the very face of Scripture.

Paul wrote: "If you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe ... that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Rom. 10:9, italics added). Here Paul makes it crystal clear that acceptance of the fact that Christ rose from the dead is a basic precondition for being a Christian.

But what exactly do we mean by resurrection? "Spiritual survival" is how the liberals in the church define it. But it was not just the spiritual part of Jesus that continued after the tomb - it was the total Christ.

True, His body possessed additional powers and properties, but the physical frame which housed His spirit after He left the tomb was the same one that was nailed to the cross. "See my hands," He said to doubting Thomas, "put [your hand] into my side ... and believe" (John 20:27).

Eric Sauer, a writer and Bible teacher, makes the point: "Just as our Lord's body was capable of transfiguration without losing its identity, so it was capable of disfiguration without losing its identity." Make no mistake about it, our Lord's resurrection was a physical one. If it wasn't, then there is no salvation.


Prayer:
Father, if I am not sure of the resurrection how can I be sure I am saved? However, I am sure, for I live in a resurrected Christ. Since He was resurrected, I know I shall be too. Death has been conquered. Hallelujah!

The Swoon Theory

For reading & meditation: Acts 2:29-41

"God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact." (v. 32)

Let us pursue the question we asked yesterday: What exactly do we mean by resurrection? Some try to explain the resurrection as resuscitation - the return to life from apparent death. Those holding this view subscribe to what is called "The Swoon Theory." There are two forms of this theory.

One maintains that Jesus did not die but fainted on the cross and returned to consciousness when He was laid on the cold rock of the tomb. The other claims that after drinking the wine vinegar that was given to Him when He cried "I am thirsty,"

He fell into a stupor so deep that it was mistaken for death. But clearly our Lord actually died. The Gospels provide us with medical evidence for the fact. One of the soldiers pierced His side and there came forth "blood and water" (John 19:34).

A doctor commenting on this says: "The pericardium (the sac around the heart) was punctured and the colorless fluid flowing from the wound proves that life would have been extinct."

Was it really a convalescent Christ the disciples encountered on that first Easter Day? Could such a pathetic and powerless figure have convinced them that He had conquered death and was alive forevermore?

No, the Master, as it were, had flung from His face the mask of death, and laid down in the hearts and minds of His disciples an impression that stayed with them throughout the whole of their ministry. He who had been dead was now alive - gloriously and resplendently.

Prayer:
O Father, You whose very nature is truth, would You foist upon us a lie and have us believe Your Son rose from the dead when He did not? I cannot believe it. The life by which I live is resurrection life. I cannot be alive in someone who is dead. Amen.

The True and the False

For reading & meditation: 2 Timothy 1

" ... our Savior, Christ Jesus ... has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light ..." (v. 10)

Several of the world's religions, when faced with the perplexing issue of Christ's return from the dead, explain it in terms of reincarnation. A proponent of one of the Eastern religions says: "Christ's resurrection was really a reincarnation - another soul in another body."

I once heard a Christian minister declare that Paul's reference to Christ as the firstborn from among the dead (Col. 1:18) was a clear allusion to reincarnation.

There is no doubt that our Lord came from a virgin womb and a virgin tomb, but the body that emerged from the sepulchre was not fashioned in the tomb as it had been when He was an infant in Mary's womb. The body was the same one as before.

Others try to explain Christ's resurrection as living on in the recollection of others. "To live in the minds and hearts of those we love," goes a well-known saying often heard at funerals, "is not to die."

It has to be acknowledged that some live so vibrantly that it is hard to think of them as dead even after one has attended their funeral. But when we talk about Christ's resurrection, we are not saying He survives in our memories. Recollection is not resurrection.

The body which died upon the cross and was laid in the cool tomb on the evening of the first Good Friday was miraculously infused with life once again early in the morning of the first Easter Day.

It is as literal and as factual as that. This - nothing less and nothing else - is what we mean by the resurrection of our Lord from the dead.

Prayer:
Father, I am so thankful that in bringing Your Son back to life You brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. I know this to be true for in You there cannot be such a thing as death. Life is so sure - as sure as You are. Amen.

The Mystery Rolled Back

For reading & meditation: 1 Corinthians 15:50-58

"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" (v. 55)

Mark's observation "that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away" (Mark 16:4) seems a simple statement, but behind it lies a truth that is positively staggering in its implications.

One is that no longer can death be an intimidator. "Death," said someone, "is the great enigma of life; humanly speaking, it is the one secret of the universe which is kept, the silence of which is never broken."

To the weary and despairing, death may come as a friend; the cynical and disillusioned may meet it with indifference; to the healthy and the happy it may appear as a foe; but it comes to all. Death is like a great stone that blocks the path of human aspiration.

How certain can we be of the continuity of life beyond death? What modest person would find in himself anything worthy to endure for all eternity?

Such questions have been asked down the centuries. Death is a mystery - "the undiscovered country from which no traveler returns." Then came the first Easter Day, and the stone was rolled away.

One Traveler did return. Death is an abysmal cavern no longer but a tunnel with light at the farther end. If people have seen it as a blind alley, then they need think no longer in those terms. It is now a thoroughfare, a highway.

"'Tis death is dead, not He," said the hymnist. The mystery is a mystery no more. The stone that was rolled away the first Easter morn was not just the rock that sealed the tomb. Our Lord rolled back for us the mystery of death also.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ, I rejoice and rejoice continually in Your glorious and triumphant victory over death. For Your victory is my victory. Help me to live by it, in it, and for it. I am grateful to my depths - grateful forever. Amen.

Not an Exit - an Entrance

For reading & meditation: Matthew 28:1-15

"... an angel of the Lord ... going to the tomb, rolled back the stone ..." (v. 2)

Was it really necessary for the stone to be rolled away before our Lord could exit the tomb? Christ's resurrection body was able to pass easily through doors, for He came to His disciples when the doors were shut. The stone was rolled away not that our Lord might come out but that the disciples might go in. It was intended not as a means of exit but as a means of entrance.

One preacher put it like this: "God rolled away the stone not that His Son might rise, but that we might know He had risen; that we might steal into the empty tomb and see only the place where they laid Him." My pastor when I was a young Christian said: "Suppose we live in a home that has no electricity and a young nephew comes to stay with us for a weekend.

Suppose also when we put the child to bed there is in the corner of the room a dark curtain which hides such things as traveling cases. And suppose further, when we are about to leave the room taking the light with us, the child falteringly confesses to a fear that on the other side of the dark curtain is someone that might harm him. What do we do?

We go to the curtain, fling it aside, flood the gloomy recess with light and say: 'Look, there is nothing to fear.'" To remove the curtain is to remove the dread. That is why God rolled away the stone. It was not necessary for the resurrection, but it was necessary for its proclamation.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus, had You stalled at the last ditch, had You been beaten at the barrier of death, then we would be stalled eternally. But now we go through the barrier with You. Nothing can stop us. Amen.

A Glorious Uprising

For reading & meditation: Acts 13:16-41

"... 'You will not let your Holy One see decay.' " (v. 35)

We spend one more day considering the implications arising from the rolling away of the stone. What did that rolled-away stone reveal? Well, follow the women into the tomb.

Its just a large hole hewn in a rock. What do you see? Just "the place where they laid him" (Mark 16:6). All that was left were the graveclothes. Note that Peter saw "the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head" (John 20:6-7).

Some scholars say that the Greek words used to describe the head-cloth signify that it still had an annular shape - that it still indicated the outline of His head. Can you see what this suggests? He passed through it without it being unwound.

This was no laborious unwinding! This was a glorious uprising! There was no possibility that the graveclothes could have looked the way they did without a resurrection. Had the head-cloth been torn apart, the impression gained would have been quite different.

It was probably this simple but tremendous fact - the fact that Jesus had clearly passed through the shroud without it being unwound - that convinced the first observers they had witnessed the miracle of resurrection. Do you think of a tomb as being cold and eerie? That is not our Lord's tomb.

No, it is quiet and calm. Our crucified God rested for hours and hours on a cool bed of rock. And to quote the poet Alice Meynell: All alone ... He rose again behind the stone.

Prayer:
O Jesus, You who are not an evader but a confronter of problems. You have faced everything I face including death. And yet You went through it, not around it. You conquered death by going through it, and now because I am in You I shall conquer it also. Amen.

Anteroom to Glory

For reading & meditation: Ephesians 1:15-23

"... he raised [Christ] from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms ..." (v. 20)

Young Christians who have just come into the faith often ask: Why is the resurrection so important?

How can an event which took place 2,000 years ago have any relevance for us today? Three very simple statements (not original to me) will bring us to the heart of the matter. First, the resurrection of Christ assures us of God's forgiveness.

Forgiveness is one of humanity's greatest needs. Jack Winslow, in his book Confession and Absolution, says that the head of a large English mental hospital remarked that he could dismiss half of his patients immediately if they could be assured of forgiveness.

The resurrection is convincing proof that Christ's sacrifice on the cross was accepted, and thus gives us the assurance that all our sins can be forgiven. Second, the resurrection of Christ assures us of God's power. It is one thing to be forgiven; it is another to live above the power of sin.

"Men may change their ways," say some writers (as we saw) from non-Christian religions, "but they can't change their character." Well, God can change people's character. He did so with the apostle Paul, with Peter, and with countless others.

Paul's prayer in the passage before us today focuses on this - that we might comprehend something of the power released in the world through the resurrection. Third, the resurrection assures us of God's ultimate triumph.

Other religions and ideologies have very vague ideas about the future. Some believe in endless cycles of reincarnations; others nirvana. Christians, however, have a hope that is different. Death for a believer is nothing more than the anteroom to glory.

Prayer:
Father, this must be the moment when debate ends and dedication begins. As You have done so much for me, I want to commit myself in a deeper way than ever before to living life in the power of Your resurrection. Help me dear Father. In Jesus' Name. Amen.

Risen... and Exalted

For reading & meditation: Acts 1:1-11

"... he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight." (v. 9)

Before we conclude our meditations on the uniqueness of Christianity, we must mention our Lord's ascension. I much prefer the word exaltation to ascension to describe Christ's return to the throne of God, for that is what it really was - an exaltation.

Paul, in some verses in the passage we looked at yesterday (Eph. 1:20-21), points out that following His resurrection our Lord was elevated above all possible rivals: "far [note the word far] above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come."

Jesus has been exalted to the highest place, and it is this "supremacy" which His Father wants Him to enjoy forever.

This thrilling truth puts into proper perspective the use of the word superiority which is a word commonly used by Christians when comparing the faith to others. We must be careful how we use the word.

Adopting an air of superiority toward people of other faiths displays nothing more than discourtesy and arrogance. John Stott comments: "It is not 'Christianity' as an empirical institution or system for which Christians should claim superiority. It is Christ, and only Christ.

We should not be afraid to affirm without embarrassment that Christ is superior to all other religious leaders, precisely because He alone humbled Himself in love even to the cross and therefore God has raised Him 'above' every other person, rank, or title." If God has given this supreme position to Jesus and so honored Him, then we should give Him the same honor also.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus, I honor You. Oh how I honor You. May Your Church this day and every day give unto You the honor which You so rightly and richly deserve. Blessed be Your wondrous Name forever. Amen.

No Cross without a Crown

For reading & meditation: Ephesians 4:1-16

"He ... ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe." (v. 10)

In his autobiography, A King's Story, the Duke of Windsor told of a strange thing that happened at the funeral of his father, King George V.

He described how, as his father's body was being conveyed on a draped gun carriage through the crowded streets of London, a mishap occurred which only those closest to the scene witnessed. The imperial crown, removed from the Tower of London, had been placed over the Royal Standard and secured to the lid of the coffin.

However, the jolting of the vehicle caused the Maltese Cross, which surmounts the crown, to fall. "Suddenly," said the Duke, "out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of light dancing along the pavement. One of the sailors, marching behind the gun carriage, picked it up, took it to his commanding officer, and said, 'This cross fell off, Sir. It must be replaced.'

The officer was a little bewildered by the untoward happening and said: 'Must it be replaced now?' 'Yes Sir,' replied the sailor, 'The crown is never complete without the cross.' " In Christian terms the converse is also true - the cross is not complete without the crown. The ascension inevitably followed the atonement; the coronation the crucifixion.

One writer says: "One senses a certain embarrassment in some ministers where the subject of the ascension is concerned. They tend to shy clear of the topic or dismiss it lightly as no more than a graphic myth or triumphalist parable."

But if there had been no ascension there would be no gospel. The cross would not be complete without the crown.

Prayer:
O Father, how can I ever sufficiently thank You that the work of salvation is complete. Nothing more needs to be done than has been done. Your Coronation spells it out in the clearest of terms. I am so deeply, deeply grateful. Amen.

Christ - Our Precursor

For reading & meditation: Hebrews 6

"... Jesus, who went before us ..." (v. 20)

Out of all the aspects of truth that surround the fact of our Lord's ascension, one of the greatest is surely this - Christ is our Precursor.

A precursor is really a forerunner - an advance runner - and that is precisely the term which our text for today applies to the climactic ministry of our ascended Lord. The NIV translates the word prodromos (forerunner) thus: "who went before us."

That translation, in my opinion, is not nearly as appealing as that found in other versions, where the word forerunner is actually used. "Forerunner" brings to mind a picture of our Lord as a celestial outrider "bringing many sons to glory" (Heb. 2:10), and reminds us of a petition in the great high priestly prayer: Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory ..." (John 17:24).

Henry Longfellow, in his Golden Legend, put it like this: When Christ ascended Triumphantly, from star to star, He left the gates of heaven ajar! Much as I like Longfellow, I have to disagree. Our Lord left the gates of heaven not just "ajar" but wide open.

One of the creeds expresses it more effectively: "When Thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, Thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers." Whatever the future holds for us, we who are Christ's can be sure of this: our Lord has ascended into heaven. And so, too, shall we.

Prayer:
O Father, I see that not only was there an ascension in the life of Your Son, but there is to be one in mine too. According to Your Word, I am to be "caught up in the clouds" and to be with You forever. Lord Jesus, come quickly. Amen.

Jesus, Yes - Church, No

For reading & meditation: 2 Corinthians 5:11-21

"We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God." (v. 20)

Now that we have looked at the aspects of our faith which make it unique among all world religions, we must face some other important issues before finally drawing to a close. Being Christians does not mean we therefore have to believe that all other religions are completely wrong.

As C. S. Lewis pointed out: "If you are an atheist you have to believe that the main point in all religions is simply one huge mistake.

But if you are a Christian you are free to think that all religions, even the queerest of them, contain at least some hint of truth. Being a Christian, however, does mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong.

As in arithmetic there is only one right answer to a sum and all other answers are wrong. But some wrong answers are much nearer to being right than others." While never budging from what we believe, we must show a loving disposition toward those of other faiths.

A group of adherents to the Muslim faith gathered outside a church in one of Britain's northern cities shouting: "Jesus, Yes; the Church, No." Their complaint was based on the fact that the minister and people of that particular church had pushed thousands of leaflets through local mailboxes stating: "Islam is a devilish religion; only the Christian religion is of God." We can be passionate in our faith without being discourteous to people.

We may disagree with what someone believes, but we must disagree agreeably. As one old preacher quaintly put it: "To win some we must be winsome."

Prayer:
Father, I see from the text before me today that You want me to implore people to come to You, not intimidate them. Make me a firm but loving witness - one who can disagree without being disagreeable. In Christ's Name I ask it. Amen.

Common Grace

For reading & meditation: Acts 17:16-34

"For in him we live and move and have our being." (v. 28)

God is active not only in the Church but in the world and in those belonging to other religions also. Christians believe that God has revealed Himself in Jesus in a unique way, as declared in the Scriptures, and has nothing more to reveal than He has revealed. But does that mean God is interested only in Christians?

Not at all. One of the statements in the passage before us today proclaims: "He is not far from each one of us" (v. 27). By creation all men and women are God's offspring, and they live and move and have their being in Him.

Christians believe that because Jesus is the Light of the world, and is described by John in the Fourth Gospel as "the true light that gives light to every man" (John 1:9).

Truth and beauty are derived from Him, even though people may be unaware of their source. Theologians refer to this as "common grace" - the kindness God shows to all human beings even though they know Him not.

This is not to be confused with "saving grace," which is the kindness and mercy He extends to those who humbly receive the sacrificial offering which His Son made for them on the cross.

Clearly, those who belong to other faiths are of deep concern to God, and that same concern ought to be ours.

It should show itself in the way we talk to them, deal with them, and pray for them. There is no better way to end a discussion with an adherent of some other faith than to say and mean: "God loves you, and so do I."

Prayer:
O God, can it be that sometimes You are hindered in the process of bringing others to Yourself by those of us who are more interested in winning an argument than winning a soul? Infuse us with Your love - Calvary love. In Jesus' Name we ask it. Amen.

Three Important Facts

For reading & meditation: Acts 10:23-48

"Now we are all here ... to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us." (v. 33)

If, as the Scripture declares, Jesus is the only way, what about people in other faiths? First, we must be clear that there is no such thing as self-salvation.

Nobody can achieve salvation by his or her religion, sincerity, or good works. Second, Jesus Christ is the only way to God and the only Savior. Our Lord Himself said: "No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). This effectively ends all argument.

Third, we do not know how much knowledge and understanding of the gospel a person needs to have in order to call upon God for mercy and be saved. In the Old Testament, people were justified by faith even though they had little knowledge or expectation of Christ.

I believe that when people become aware that they cannot save themselves and need to throw themselves upon Gods mercy, in some way God reveals Himself to them and brings them through His Son to a saving knowledge of Himself.

I have met many people from other faiths who, realizing that they could not save themselves and yearning to find salvation, were amazingly led by God to a book, a leaflet, or an audiotape, that helped them understand how to come to God through Jesus.

Does this mean we don't need to be concerned about presenting the gospel to people? No, it is much easier for people to believe if they have heard.

God worked miraculously to bring the gospel to Cornelius. So too He will work for those who are willing to give up all ideas of saving themselves and look to Him alone for salvation.

Prayer:
O Father, what a glimpse this gives me of Your eagerness to save all that will come to You through Your Son. May this inspire me more than ever to do my part in making Your gospel known. In Christ's Name I pray. Amen.