Mikey V.D.’s Blog

If your ‘Christian” message does not include Jesus and the cross then it is weak and impotent.  How can we spread a message that does not include Jesus and the cross.  If we only talk about the hippie Jesus and leave out King Jesus then we have forgotten the message of Jesus, we have forgotten the gospel.  The power of our message does not lie in us, it is in the power of Jesus, the real Jesus.  See we need to proclaim the real Jesus, not just a get out of hell Jesus and not just the hippie Jesus.

A lot of people my age have fallen for this hippie Jesus, I just have to ask have we not learned from the past?  Have we not learned from the past liberal sects of Christianity that have since been made irrelevant?  I ask those of you who are my age and older… and well younger also to search the Scriptures and try to tell me that this social gospel that you have repackaged is the true Gospel that the Bible talks about.

So is your gospel impotent?

“To suppose that whatever God requireth of us that we have power of ourselves to do, is to make the cross and grace of Jesus Christ of none effect.” (Works of John Owen: volume 3 pg. 433)

Here is a quote that a friend of mine named Don wrote.

“We could have done nothing to save ourselves and there is nothing that we can do to stop God from loving is us. God is bigger than any sin we have ever committed or ever will commit. Grace Won.”

It is a quote that is so true.

So yesterday at work I had a lot of time to think so here comes a post from that thinking.

The cross is the ugliest thing ever known to man. It was one of if not the most torturous killing devices ever known to man. It is something that the Roman empire perfected over many years. It is a device where a person would suffocated to death. Now I don’t want to go into huge detail about the cross however I want to point how absolutely ugly the cross is.

Now my question is how did something so ugly so shameful become beautiful?

How did such an ugly thing become something that is so acceptable?

How did such a disgusting thing become so adored?

The answer is Jesus. When he died upon the cross he conquered sin. He gave us a way to have life. His death makes it so that we can live. So that is why something so ugly can be the most beautiful thing in the world. While we need to remember the awfulness of it, we need to remember the beauty of it. On the cross Jesus bore our sins and paid the price for them and we just need to repent and believe in Jesus to have life. That is how we can proclaim oh the wonderful cross.

So I grew up in a church where we were told that the way that the church was going to change was by voting for the right people. By the way the “right” people were the Republican party. Somehow by voting for them they were going to change the United States back into a “Christian” nation. One flaw in this thinking is that the United States was ever a “Christian” nation. My response would be, so was the U.S. a Christian nation when they kicked the Native Americans out of there land and killed most of them? Or when they enslaved Africans? Was it when the U.S. set the slaves free yet then didn’t give them any rights? Was it when the U.S. oppressed women and treated them like property? My point is one would have a hard time defending the idea or thought that the United States was ever a “Christian” nation.

Now with that aside the question remains. Would political power ever work in making the United States a “Christian” nation? Would gaining political power ever change people’s lives and transform people’s hearts? My answer is no. My reason for this is the cross. The cross is the ultimate symbol of the Kingdom of God, it is the ultimate example of how we are to live. You see the people during Jesus’ time where expecting a messiah that would defeat the Roman empire by force, by political force and power. However what did Jesus the messiah do. He won by dying on a cross. That’s right he won by dying on a cross, by sacrificing himself, by loving those who hated him. When we read Jesus’ teachings we see this idea of loving your enemy, we see this idea of winning by serving others. When we look at Paul we see a man who was transformed by Jesus and loved his enemy and served others. Why is this? I believe that when we live life this way we are being the hands and feet of Jesus and when we become this by the power of the Holy Spirit then we can be the voice of Jesus to the world. When we become the voice of Jesus then the world will truly be changed. Then and only then will people’s hearts be transformed.

So I ask you

Who’s definition of power do you subscribe to?

Do you love your enemies?

Or are you trying to “defeat” them?