#offirstimportance

as the gospel spreads throughout the world, this new and variegated christian community develops. it is as if a great drama is being enacted. history is the theatre, the world is the stage, and church members in every land are the actors. God himself has written the play, and he directs and produces it. act by act, scene by scene, the story continues to unfold. but who are the audience? they are the cosmic intelligences, the principalities and powers in the heavenly places [Eph. 3:10]. We are to think of them as spectators of the drama of salvation. thus ‘the history of the christian church becomes a graduate school for angels.

knowing the cure tells you a lot about the gravity of the disease. in the cross we see what was needed to cure the wound of sin, and we see what lengths God was willing to go to cure it. thus we see its true character as something so reprehensible to God, as something so unfit for inclusion in God’s covenant kingdom, that his own Son must suffer. and finally, it is then that we see God’s character as the one who goes all the way, who bears the full burden of the covenant upon himself. we see a love beyond all love.

luther taught that every time you insist that i am a sinner, just so often do you call me to remember the benefit of Christ my Redeemer, upon whose shoulders, and not upon mine, lie all my sins. so, when you say that i am a sinner, you do not terrify, but comfort me immeasurably.

a true christian is not a sheep who has gone looking for the Good Shepherd and found a man who seems to fit the bill, but someone who has been looked for and found by God.

the child, in danger of the fire, just clings to the fireman, and trusts to him alone. she raises no question about the strength of his limbs to carry her, or the zeal of his heart to rescue her; but she clings. the heat is terrible, the smoke is blinding, but she clings; and her deliverer quickly bears her to safety. in the same childlike confidence cling to Jesus, who can and will bear you out of danger from the flames of sin.