In this video, Hugh Halter offers some helpful suggestions about turning church consumers into people who live on mission for and with Christ. While this is a long video, in the current climate of American church culture, I found it worth taking the time to consider. I broke it up into viewing sections – watching 15-20 minutes at a time, making note of the point at which I stopped, and picking up again as I had time. While I don’t embrace all of Halter’s ecclesiology (i.e. ways we govern and do church), I am hungry to chew on any ideas in-line with the compelling mission of the gospel. Halter has proven to have both an appreciation of the gospel and good ideas for missional mobilization.
Day: January 26, 2015
Spiritual Chrysalis
In preparation for this past Sunday message from Galatians, I again marveled at the insight and passion of Martin Luther concerning our Union with Christ:
“So far as justification is concerned, Christ and I must be so closely attached that He lives in me and I in Him. What a marvelous way of speaking!
Because He lives in me, whatever grace, righteousness, life, peace, and salvation there is in me is all Christ’s; nevertheless, it is mine as well, by the cementing and attachment that are through faith, by which we become as one body in the Spirit.
Since Christ lives in me, grace, righteousness, life, and eternal salvation must be present with Him; and the Law, sin, and death must be absent. Indeed, the Law must be crucified, devoured, and abolished by the Law—and sin by sin, death by death, the devil by the devil.
In this way Paul seeks to withdraw us completely from ourselves, from the Law, and from works, and to transplant us into Christ and faith in Christ, so that in the area of justification we look only at grace, and separate it far from the Law and from works, which belong far away…
But faith must be taught correctly, namely, that by it you are so cemented to Christ that He and you are as one person, which cannot be separated but remains attached to Him forever and declares: ‘I am as Christ.’
And Christ, in turn, says: ‘I am as that sinner who is attached to Me, and I to him. For by faith we are joined together into one flesh and one bone.’
Thus Ephesians 5.30 says: ‘We are members of the body of Christ, of His flesh and of His bones,’ in such a way that this faith couples Christ and me more intimately than a husband is coupled to his wife.”
~ from Luther’s Works, Vol. 26: Lectures on Galatians, 1535, Chapters 1-4
GRACE & PEACE 