It’s with some trepidation that I start writing this message which is essentially a call to my family, friends, colleagues and anyone else who does not know Christ as their Lord and saviour. Some of you might think you do, but your lifestyle and lack of devotion to obedience of God reveals otherwise. Some of you are apathetic or uncaring about the importance of thinking about these things. Some of you are vehemently opposed to Christianity for various reasons, including but not limited to, abuse by many ‘christians’ of God’s commands to their own selfish and sinful ends, biblical history does not match the ‘scientific facts’ , misunderstanding what the bible’s teaching really is, a misunderstanding or rejection of God purely because your own way is more palatable to you, your view of Christians (including me) is that they are narrow-minded, intolerant, perhaps even foolish or uninformed and there are many other objections.
I am not going to try to present an apologetic for the above reasons for rejection there are plenty of apologetics by people far more capable than me that can be read, John Blanchard, C.S. Lewis, Josh Mc Dowell, and R.C. Sproul come to mind but there are hundreds of other apologists. What I am going to do is what the bible tells me to do which is to share the message of the Gospel of Christ. I would like to say though that along the way of my life most of the above objections have, at one time or another, been held by me, some of them I have not yet found an acceptable answer to yet, but they pale to insignificance in light of the things that I believe are true. What I or any other created being understand about God is miniscule compared to what He truly is, you cannot define Him in space or time as He created those things, and as creatures also operating in that sphere it is impossible for us to grasp a complete understanding of Him, but we should nevertheless get to know as much as we can from what He does reveal of His character in His creation and through His Word. On that note and because my beliefs are centered on the Word of God as presented in the book known as the Bible let me just say that the reason I believe it is essentially twofold. Firstly the words of this book present the best and most complete characterisation of humankinds nature of any other literature or explanation than I have ever come across. It does this in a way that is reflective of true life, every human hero, except for one, in the book is shown to have serious failings. Anyone who honestly examines themselves will admit that even in their own estimation they constantly fail themselves and those around them through what essentially boils down to selfishness and pride. Secondly it provides what I believe is the best explanation of why this is, and even better provides a solution that doesn’t depend on our frail imperfect attempts of redemption but on the work of an all-knowing perfect God.
My title is quite deliberate, because the message I’m sharing is Christ and it is Christmas (Christ mess) time (age). Also generally speaking we tend to mess up the message of Christ. Christmas is of course the time of year we celebrate the birth of Jesus even though in reality He was not born on Dec 25, that date was chosen to try to Christianize a pagan celebration that occurred that time of year, an act that was in my view unnecessary however it has become a time of year when many people are in a reflective or good will mood so I will make use of the opportunity it provides. I will just add though that in truth we should celebrate Christ and use every opportunity to share the message every day.
Okay I admit also the title comes a bit from my weird sense of humour.
So why share the message of Christ, well to put it simply, wide is the way to destruction and many there are that are on that path, narrow is the way to salvation and few there are that enter that way. It is not the case that I think I’m right and you are wrong and therefore I must force my view on you, it is the case that I think you may be on the way to destruction,and I want to rescue you. What kind of person sees their blinded friend walking towards a cliff and doesn’t try to stop them. What kind of parent sees a determined child putting their hand in a fire and doesn’t try everything to stop them. On the other hand you may be thinking there might be more than one way to be saved, well Jesus himself said ‘I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me’ . You may be thinking that you are not so bad and you aren’t heading towards that destruction sorry.. ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’, or maybe you ‘know in your heart’ that your way is the right way sorry again… ‘the heart is deceitful above all things’ the first thing our sinful hearts deceive is ourselves. Jesus tells us that ‘on that day, many will come to me and say Lord, Lord did we not…..’ note these are people who think they have the right answer, they even correctly call Jesus Lord recognising Him as God, they even did things in his name, even casting out demons, but yet he says to these ‘depart from me I never knew you’. The essential mistake these people made was that though they recognised Him for who He is they thought they could get to heaven, or eternal life, by earning their way through their own works. What they needed to do was recognise their total inadequacy and trust the redemptive sacrifice of the only holy scapegoat man who took the punishment of our sin for us. By the way the only reason that He was the only truly holy man is because He was also God, I cannot pretend to completely understand how that could be, as I said earlier we live inside this ‘box’ that God created and we cannot fully comprehend Him, nor how or why He does the things He does. Jesus was not an angel, He accepted the praise and worship due to God, something which when prophets and apostles did to angels the angel concerned rebuked the man and told him to worship God and not angels.
Now in case you missed it among the rhetoric above here is a rewording. God is a perfect being outside of time and space who created us for His own purpose which we cannot completely comprehend. The nature of God’s character which is holiness actively results in anything unholy being put into a state of destruction. Man although created holy had the ability to choose to obey or disobey God, in being convinced that he could become like God chose to disobey and in that act became unholy, and therefore doomed to destruction. God is just and cannot allow this sin to go unpunished, but solved the problem himself by taking on the punishment in the person of His one and only Son who is also fully God (again something we cannot properly comprehend that God is three persons but also one person i.e. His person is multidimensional beyond the dimensions of time and space that we can comprehend). Only by accepting that His work alone is sufficient to be the punishment for our sin can we be saved. This acceptance and resulting trust is something that in our own strength we are incapable of, and so the third person of the trinity is sent to indwell us giving us His strength so that His work will become complete in us. The reason we are still imperfect as Christians is because we now have two natures our sinful nature and our Holy Spirit, Christ blood bought, Father sent nature, in a sense we are still able to disobey and we do, but in the end our sinful nature will be defeated and we will have full communion with God.
A few last things, the destruction I mentioned above is not a once off destruction and then there is nothing kind of destruction, it is an everlasting destruction, part of which is the recognition of your unholiness in the burning everlasting light of God’s holiness. The acceptance mentioned above is not a once off acceptance, if it is real it will be an acceptance and trust that endures past your physical death. How do you know that your acceptance and trust is real? You can know it is real when you are living a life devoted to the aim of joy in obedience to God’s design for you, recognising your own inability to accomplish this goal and trusting God to complete the work in you. This simple statement is fleshed out more in scripture … go digging.
All of this is said knowing that many will reject it but I have to do my utmost and be true to what I believe and steer those headed towards destruction away from it. What else should one who truly loves do?
