Heavenly Springs

Holding Fast The Doctrines of Grace

An Excerpt from “How Christianity Changed the World”

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“Many today who disparage Christianity may not know or believe that, were it not for Christianity, they would not have the freedom that they presently enjoy. The very freedom of speech and expression that ironically permits them to castigate Christian values is largely a by-product of Christianity’s influences that have been incorporated into the social fabric of the Western world …  This freedom, similar to the freedom that Adam and Eve once had, ironically permits the possessors of freedom to dishonor the very source of their freedom.  As Fernand Braduel has so eloquently stated, ‘Throughout the history of the West, Christianity has been at the heart of the civilization it inspired, even when it has allowed itself to be captured or deformed by it.’

On the basis of the historical evidence, I am fully persuaded that had Jesus Christ never walked the dusty paths of ancient Palestine, suffered, died , and risen from the dead, and never assembled around him a small group of disciples who spread out into the pagan world, the West would not have attained its high level of civilization, giving it the many human benefits it enjoys today. One only needs to look to sectors of the world where Christianity has had little or no presence to see the remarkable differences.”1

1. Alvin J. Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World, (Michigan: Zondervan, 2001) 22-23 (Nook eReader version)

Individuality, Christ’s Novel Doctrine

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If you want to know what God is like, you need look no further than the person of Jesus Christ.  The author of Hebrews explains that Jesus “is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3a). Those who look into the face of Jesus look into the very face of God.   Jesus himself said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9).

With that in mind, one of my favorite things about the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are the glimpses we get into the nature of God by way of the man, Jesus Christ.  Follow Jesus through any Gospel and you will find him engaging people in a very personal and tender way. Take for example, the woman at the well. You can read about this very personal interaction that Jesus had with a sinful woman in John 4:1-26.  Despite this woman’s wretched disposition and sinful history, Jesus did not come to her with a hammer.  Instead, he came with a wash basin and he cleansed her of all sin and defilement.

And so it is that he knows each and every one of us.  I say with the Psalmist, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.” (Psalms 139:6).  Let us ever be mindful of the fact that God has searched us and He knows us.  (Psalms 139:1). He knows us individually.  Let us also, as we have been granted this brief time on earth, show the genuine love that Jesus had for individuals as we preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world.

“But Christ’s most novel doctrine, which was to be first developed, was the sacredness of human individuality.  The world had then not too little but too much social action.  Christ has been called ‘the discoverer of the individual.’ The sacredness of human individuality, because it was a new truth to the world’s consciousness, though implied in man’s creation, became the central truth of Christian history, which is the history of civilization as well.  Christ made the world know and feel that each human being, even the woman, the child, the slave, the captive, the foreigner, the cripple, the pauper, the idiot, the insane, the criminal, is a soul, a son of God, a brother or sister of Christ, a brother or sister of every other human being, to be loved and helped, not hated or harmed. Slowly the earthquake might of that idea transformed Europe.”  (Wilbur Crafts, Practical Christian Sociology, page 33).