Thursday, October 12, 2006

Pistos ho Kalon

"The one who calls you is faithful." 1 Thessalonians 5:24

Someone wrote this on a card to N.T. Wright the day he was ordained. "It was and is a wonderful phrase."

It's not just about a vocation of ministry in church, it's also about our daily lives. In Thessalonians, one of the main themes is God calls us to be Holy. "To be Holy is hard work, but we believe it is God Himself... who enables us to get on and do it."

"Some Christians, emphasizing the boundless love of God and the doctrine of justification by faith apart from works, run the risk of underestimating the call to holiness, which Paul-- who is after all the great exponent of God's love and of free justification-- never did."

Well, this is exactly the problem I've seen for many years, but N.T. Wright put it in better English than I could, haha. I'm really sad when the church emphasized so much on "justification by faith. Not that it is not an important doctrine, but when people said you have to believe in this doctrine in order to be saved, it's just too... bad. Because of the Reformed tradition, I guess, Protestants always emphasize on this point.

For those of you who know me, you may have heard me saying this before. I don't believe you need to know that to be saved. ok, you can quote me on this and brand me as a heretic. =)

Seriously, I think many people doesn't know about this, for example, illiterate old people in China who simply trust God despite Cultural Revolution and everything... I don't think I'll say more on this.

Just that, I need to work even harder to be holy. Let's all work hard on this.

No comments: