Christendom the mighty city

We would have healed Babylon, but she cannot be healed Jer.5:19 niv

..you great city, you mighty city, Babylon! Rev18:10 esv

Reformation

Christians who mean well and love God and His people, sometimes imagine they can help “reform” Christendom. They hope they can try to change it, fix it and make it more like what Jesus intended for His followers. They want to clean her up and try a new “look” on her, a new dress perhaps, different colorful adornments. But she remains unchanged inside. She remains the same “woman” under whichever color dress she is wearing.

Christendom, a world system, its formal structure and function, is not a work of God. It is a carnal work of man and the spiritual powers that are in opposition to Christ. Christendom is a work of religious power and political power and financial power. All the striving, writing, debating, disputations, councils, logic, academics, rhetoric, persuasion, programs, plans, governments, strategies, architects, kings, popes, priests, PhDs, bankers, lawyers and politicians in the world cannot fix it.

The work of God, through those who abide in Christ, is a work of the Spirit. This work of God in the Spirit, through Spirit-filled disciples of Jesus Christ, has been continuing along in Holy Spirit power, all this time, regardless of what Christendom has been doing. And these Spirit filled disciples do get revived, encouraged, guided, corrected, disciplined, exhorted, sanctified and brought to repentance directly by the Spirit of Christ. Thus Christ reforms the hearts of his people, His ekklesia that He is building Himself.

Justification by Faith

We enjoyed learning some church history this year in our “Rome through the Renaissance” Middle Ages history unit. The most interesting topic was learning the basics of the Reformation of the 1500’s. As someone whom God saved -via the Scriptures- out of the Roman Catholic Church, I’m very thankful for the men God raised up in Europe to bring His Word to people who previously did not have access to the Truth of the Gospel, but were instead taught they could be saved by performing religious works and paying money to The Church, and that righteousness was bestowed upon them by The Church. The stories of the martyrs who helped get God’s Word into the hands of common people was most inspiring. Here is a hymn that illustrates some precious Bible Truth that people discovered as God’s Word shed Light on the spiritual darkness that is false teaching.

Justification by faith, not by works.
by Isaac Watts

Rom. 3:19-22.

Vain are the hopes the sons of men
On their own works have built;
Their hearts by nature all unclean,
And all their actions guilt.

Let Jew and Gentile stop their mouths
Without a murm’ring word,
And the whole race of Adam stand
Guilty before the Lord.

In vain we ask God’s righteous law
To justify us now;
Since to convince and to condemn
Is all the law can do.

Jesus, how glorious is thy grace!
When in thy name we trust,
Our faith receives a righteousness
That makes the sinner just.