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GOOD FENCES MAKE
BAD CHRISTIANS #2
A BRIDGE OF BLOOD
Deep down, are there ever people you dislike because
of their skin color? Or their lack of ambition, their lazy welfare-chiseling?
Maybe simply the fact that they're a lousy co-worker? The Bible doesn't
tell us that it's EASY to reconcile; it simply says that we have to.
We have a book here in the office where the author
makes a very stark admission.
"I grew up a racist," he writes. "We used to call Martin
Luther King Jr. Martin Lucifer Coon.' . . . Although I am not yet 50
years old, I remember well when the South practiced a perfectly legal
form of apartheid. Stores in downtown Atlanta had three restrooms: White
Men, White Women, and Colored. Gas stations had two drinking fountains,
one for Whites and one for Colored. Motels and restaurants served white
patrons only, and when the Civil Rights Act made such discrimination illegal,
many owners shuttered their establishments."
He goes on to tell how his church used to meet black
worshipers at the entrance with a preprinted card, asking that they leave.
When Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, his church started up a private
academy white kids only that got around the ruling.
"A year later," the same writer confesses,
"the church board rejected a Carver Bible Institute student for membership
(his name was Tony Evans and he went on to become a prominent pastor and
speaker.)"
Well, friend, we've quoted that Tony Evans on this
radio program many, many times. In fact, he's probably tied for frequency
with the author of this book: none other than the gifted evangelical writer,
Philip Yancey. All of this was from his own semi-autobiography, entitled
What's So Amazing About Grace?
And the reason why we go to this particular source obviously Yancey
is a man who has experienced a stunning turnaround is just this. We're
studying here in Ephesians chapter two, and Paul has just been writing
in verses 11, 12 about how the world is so divided. Jews and Gentiles.
The chosen and the UN-chosen. Good and bad. And yes, all too tragically,
Sunday and Sabbath mornings have been "the most segregated hour in
America," as black and white Christians have refused to sit next
to each other in a church pew. But this takes us now to verse 13:
"But NOW," Paul writes, "in Christ
Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood
of Christ."
And the rest of this chapter goes on to describe how
this has to happen: two worlds becoming one. Two groups blending into
one. Two universes merging into one. "Reconciled through the cross,"
he writes, further down in verse 16.
We've been taking some generous intellectual bites out of two great Bible
commentaries we have stacked up here at the office. And the Adventist
collection makes this observation about the power of verse 13:
"We are RECONCILED by His blood," they
write, "REDEEMED by His blood, JUSTIFIED by His blood, and CLEANSED
by His blood. The blood of Christ is the vindication of God's good name"
very true if you stop and think about it, remembering that God Himself
sent His own Son on this mission of rescue "and the proof OF His
love."
Even if believers don't fully understand the spiritual
science of how the blood of Jesus redeems, justifies, and cleanses us,
I think most of us accept those three on faith. It's true because the
Word says it is true. But this fourth one often stymies us: "We are
reconciled by His blood." "Those of us who were once far away
[from each other] have been brought near . . . THROUGH THE BLOOD OF CHRIST."
It's painfully true that all through history, people with crosses on their
lapels and Bibles in their hands have failed to reconcile. The blood was
shed for them right there at the cross and yet many of those same people
have gone out and burned crosses on somebody else's lawn. Why? What has
gone wrong? How does the cross bring reconciliation?
Well, let me share two anecdotes and the life of Philip Yancey himself
is Exhibit A. "I grew up a racist," he says. "That's what
I was." As a child, as a teenager, as a hate-filled young man, he
despised people of other backgrounds. He spouted the same racist poison
as his peers. Today, several decades later, as he has faithfully studied
the Christian message, he has shed those views. Has it been hard? I have
no doubt it has. Has he sometimes had to choke back epithets, bathe his
mind in Scripture texts because certain stereotypes still linger? I'm
sure that is a daily challenge. But Philip Yancey, as he has written,
and prayed, and immersed himself in the Christian gospel of grace, has
slowly come to realize that true Christianity MUST go with reconciliation.
It does, because it has to.
He passes along, in his chapter ten, "The Arsenal of Grace,"
a story told by Walter Wink. Two peacemakers, he writes, went over to
Poland after World War II to try and bring some reconciliation. This was
ten years after, actually, so the Christian arbitrators were quite hopeful
when they asked the Polish Christians: "Would you be willing to meet
with other Christians from West Germany?" They explained that the
believers in Germany wanted to apologize and repent for what they had
done to Poland during the war. "They want to build a new relationship,"
they added.
Well, there was just no way. The Poles spoke up immediately. No way, not
a chance! "What you are asking is nie-moz'-li-wy impossible,"
asserted one. "Each stone of Warsaw is soaked in Polish blood! We
cannot forgive!"
Have you ever felt that way: that forgiveness for that certain person
is impossible? I have many times. There's no chance. How can it happen?
I can't stop the pounding in my heart. All the Lord's Prayers in the world
won't change that.
Well, speaking of the Lord's Prayer, after a very unsatisfactory and unproductive
meeting, the Christians from Poland and the two peacemakers were ready
to say goodbye. And, as is often the tradition, they gathered in a circle
and began to say the Lord's Prayer. And all at once, when they got to
the part, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive . . ." they stopped.
How could you say, "No way, we can't forgive," and then blithely
say this prayer? You can't do it. And here's how Walter Wink finishes
the story:
"Everyone stopped praying. Tension swelled
in the room." And now get this: "The Pole who had spoken so
vehemently said, I must say yes to you. I could no more pray the Our
Father, I could no longer call myself a Christian, if I refuse to forgive.
Humanly speaking, I cannot do it, but God will give me His strength!'"
And Yancey adds: "Eighteen months later the Polish and West German
Christians met together in Vienna, establishing friendships that continue
to this day."
In other words, the blood of Christ brings reconciliation
partly because it COMMANDS reconciliation. The "Our Father"
demands it. The gospel of grace demands it. The parables of Jesus, which
teach "Forgive as ye are forgiven," demand it.
But there's more to it than that. Because when we see the magnitude of
the love of God, expressed through Calvary, we slowly but surely begin
to comprehend the smallness of our petty quarrels down here below. As
the cross looms large, our trivial hatreds melt away. Only if we're LOOKING
at the cross, of course. But all through the history of the Christian
Church, believers who have truly understood the gospel message have had
Ephesians chapter two come to life for them. It has become real.
Go back for a minute to that Bible commentary statement: "The blood
of Christ is the vindication of God's good name." How true it is,
friend for good or for ill that our willingness to be one in Christ
is equally a vindication of God's name. OR . . . a besmirching of it if
we fail to forgive and unite at Calvary. True?
Let me close by taking you back to the year 1776 which is a year some
blood was shed here in the United States of America. But over in England,
a young Christian named Augustus Toplady was in attendance at a meeting
where a workingman was preaching a simple message on this text right here:
Ephesians 2:13.
"But now in Christ Jesus you who once were
far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ."
And that plain gospel message so the story goes,
it actually happened in a barn broke through to Toplady's heart. He
became a Christian that night, convinced that the blood of Jesus had the
power to save and also to reconcile.
Later, now a minister, he was hiking through the "rugged country
of . . . Cheddar Gorge," according to a Christian History Institute
web site.
"The clouds burst and torrential sheets
of rain pummeled the earth. The weary traveler," writes the anonymous
author, "was able to find shelter standing under a rocky overhang.
There, protected from the buffeting wind and rain, Augustus Toplady conceived
one of the most popular hymns ever written, Rock of Ages, Cleft for me,
Let me hide myself inThee.'"
And he writes about the blood right here in verse one:
"Let the water and the blood, From Thy riven
side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure, Cleanse me from its guilt
and power."
Yes, friend, the blood of Jesus the POWER of the
blood of Jesus is more than a match for the power of racism, and division,
and hatred. Every time, if we'll only let it.
Two years later, by the way, at the age of 38, this gifted new Christian
died of consumption.
"When I soar to worlds unknown, And behold
Thee on Thy throne, Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in
Thee."
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