I can get pretty defensive about things, even faith. Perhaps being defensive isn't always the best way. Whenever Jesus was confronted with a trick question he always seemed to find away to pin the question back on the one asking.
The other day a friend said I shouldn't go to church because it's lame. Our natural tendency would be to say "It's actually really cool, we have a hip pastor, a sweet praise team, and God is cool too. You should come." People aren't stupid. Church isn't about having a sweet praise team and a hip pastor.
I always think of things after the fact, but I completely should have conceded he was right. Church is lame because that is who it is for. Our status before God is dead and lame, blind and deaf to him. But it was through love that God sent his only Son into our flesh to reconcile the world to himself - to live and die a perfect death in our place. In fact it was while we were still sinners Christ died for us.
We mocked him, "He can heal others but he can't save himself." But it was for this reason he endured the cross. "By his wounds we are healed." Christ didn't come to be served but to serve. He took on our weak body of humanity in the incarnation, brought it into death and came out alive. This is our hope. In ourselves we have no life and righteousness. He gives us his life and righteousness so we might be raised from the dead. It was in his weakness that he is victorious. It is in Christ we see how bad our sins are. Lame, yes? Yet lame and dead he hung on the cross to save us.
When you realize how lame it actually is, and how Christ identifies with us in this, it becomes so much more than lame. It is life.
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