CHRISTIANITY

Let me tell you what it is not and then what it is.

Christian faith is not primarily about the sacrifice that believers make for Jesus in order to become Christian, but rather about the sacrifice that he made for us. Christianity is not about intensified devotion, trying even harder, doing better and being better, proving ourselves. No, no. Its essence is not doing something for Jesus but rather it is Jesus accomplishing something in us. His sacrifice once, and his ongoing work in us now. That is something that people find attractive because that is not religion. It is relationship. This is not about performance with respect to a faith system that legislates morality. A heavy-handed condemnation has resulted from that model and people have walked away from Jesus when they should have walked away from that specific model of Christian expression. Jesus' proclamation was good news. It was good news to good people and to bad people, to free people and prisoners, to healthy and diseased people, to sighted people and blind people. It was good in the first century and it is still good today because is about God's mercy to every last one of us, each of whom is naturally undeserving. Yet we are invited into relationship through faith in Jesus, Son of God, Lamb, Saviour, King, and endorsed a member of God's family.

GRASPING HOW MUCH GOD CARES FOR US

To best understand that God infinitely cares for each of us, I must begin with the Big Picture. Somewhere in the broad window of pre-history God determined to create humanity and a world in which the species would live. You and I are sitting in different places, a library, a living room, a Starbucks, some place where we can read. That’s the small picture. The big picture is that we are at this moment part of a whole human history. Human history had a beginning and it has always been moving toward a target. It is a matter of design, and this design originated with God. That design bears upon the theme that intrigued David, the psalmist, shepherd, soldier and king of ancient Israel. He wrote memorable conversation to God which is recorded as Psalm 8 in the Book of Psalms of the Old Testament.

8:1 O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
2 Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.

3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
7 all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

9 O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!