It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. He is “ ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone.’ Salvation is found in no-one else, for there is no. other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
Acts 4.10-12
Humans have an “awesome power to save ourselves”, Boris Johnson told world leaders last night, urging them to spend more on combating climate change.
The Times – Thursday 23rd September
In coupling the words recorded for us in the Book of Acts which follow on from a miraculous healing of a man lame from birth, with the Times quote from the Prime Minister, I fully appreciate that the ideas of salvation in each case are very different. However they show up major fault line in our government and national thinking, which is increasingly mirrored throughout the western world, namely that we can save ourselves and that Jesus Christ is effectively irrelevant.
The ‘super pride’ in man which says “we can do it” is daily exposed to be based on a fiction, as instead of everything we touch being turned to gold it is more often than not turned to dust.
That friction is that man is all powerful; that a generation inwardly focussed on ‘me’ will empower us; that abandoning our Judeo-Christian foundations, has somehow freed the world to move ever upwards and that as long as we solve global warming this world will last forever.
In the midst of this chaos it is fascinating to read many non-Christian writers with the insight to see that although they do not believe in God they understand the need for the solid spiritual, ethical and moral foundations on which the western world was built, which are now increasingly abandoned because “we have awesome power to save ourselves”.
How should we, who own the name ‘Christian’, respond?
We must raise our heads above the parapet. We must not, we cannot be silent. There are so many areas of life, where without the spiritual and moral compass which God’s word gives, the trajectory is furhter and further into hopelessness and despair. As this accelerates we need to remember the reply of Peter to Jesus when Jesus asked the disciples “Do you want to leave too?” John 6.67-69
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
In Jesus alone, is the source of eternal life. Not in solving global warming, which is only temporary; not by seeking to go carbon neutral which is a laudable aim as we are mandated by God to care for our world; not in any of the grand schemes that man imagines but in Jesus.
Let us be proactive in proclaiming this LIFE-GIVING truth.