Kingdom Culture – 1

You see, we don’t go around preaching about ourselves. We preach that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we ourselves are your servants for Jesus’ sake. ⁶ For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ. ⁷ We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. ⁸ We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. ⁹ We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. _{2 Corinthians 4:5‑9 (NLT)}

The expression, a chip off the old block, is truer than we’d like to think. The Bible tells us that we, human beings, were made in the image of God, but when Eve and Adam ate the forbidden fruit a competing image came to the fore. The devil said that “you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” And “when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom…” ^* The rest is history.

The devil lied and we never got the wisdom promised. In fact human beings just can’t seem to solve their own problems. Even the greatest ideas have flaws or unintended consequences. I can’t help but think of how the world is wrestling with the COVID-19 pandemic. What’s the best way to deal with it? We don’t really know. People hope for the best, but God has not left us without hope.

God’s solution is very interesting. The world will remain as helpless and hapless as it has been since Adam and Eve chose to listen to the devil. But God has given us a new and beautiful image to follow. In Christ we live as new creations in a broken world. We are all concerned about the present pandemic, and the best help we can be is that Christ be seen clearly in us. We share love and mercy and grace because God has shown us that in the person of Christ. We are called not to the follow the image that Adam and Eve left us, but that which Christ has given us through the power of God’s Spirit.