Bethany Bullet - February 4, 2014
The Fellowship Project
Seahawk fans break forth in joy! Oh Great Northwest rejoice! Your time has come O land of coffee and
grunge. The 12th man is
celebrating their victory from Super Bowl Sunday still. Underscore THEIR victory. Now
mind you I know something about such boasts and this time next year I’ll be
planning to do so again when the Steelers get number 7. But I digress; the victory which sports fans
boast in, is a victory mind you, that they played ABSOLUTELY NO ROLE IN
WHATSOEVER. They bought the jersey,
cheered the team, watched the game(s), but they never stepped onto the field,
blocked tackled, punted or passed, caught or carried; and yet for them, for
that fan, the victory is theirs!
Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. St. Paul’s declaration to the Corinthian
congregation was that our boasting is to be based NOT ON what we’ve done, but
in that through which we’ve won! Something
any football fan can understand.
Many however, even the greatest sports fans, do have
trouble understanding the spiritual illustration of the above principal. That is why Paul calls the message of the
cross “foolishness and non-sense.”
The very notion that there is nothing I can do to make myself appealing to God
and that God Himself must to do everything necessary to save us is not
appealing to us by nature! God’s way of saving people is contrary to every
reasonable plan we humans might come up with. He chooses to save creatures that
have nothing to offer Him, who have totally offended Him and who have
wholeheartedly turned away from Him. He
does so solely by His own action in Christ’s cross (that is “Paul shorthand”
for Jesus’ perfect, holy and sinless life and for His innocent suffering and
death). That is why apart from Him we
have nothing to boast of! The difference
from the Super Bowl boasting fan and the Christi-(f)-an’s boasting is that all
the Seahawk fan has gained is boasting rights and gear to wear for a year!
Through the cross (more specifically, faith in the
crucified and risen ONE) we the, Christi(f)an, gain the championship itself;
far greater than boasting rights that our team is the champ…is the right to
boast we’ve become more than champions in Him.
-Pastor Kevin Kritzer
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