The New Reformation
What we need is a 2nd Reformation.
I do believe that we are on the precipice of it. And with that reformation, things will change. As they must.
Thinking about this, I’d like to do a little bit of envisioning, imagining what a 2nd Reformation might look like.
To do this, I’ll keep it simple and highlight three. These three focuses derive from the three realities of the Trinity. And yes, the Trinity will be key to the new reformation.
So, here we go. The first huge reform that the next great awakening will bring us is a new way of talking about God.
We wrongly see and offer up a God as a being like us, albeit a supreme being.
The 2nd Reformation will correct this. Now, we don’t need to go beyond the Christian faith to bring about this correction. The Christian faith, properly understood, doesn’t claim God to be a being like us. Thomas Aquinas who more than anyone else fostered the orthodox view of Christianity preached a God that is beyond being and non-being. God is the sheer act, the sheer verb of be-ing itself, Aquinas said.
Maybe this philosophical-speak is too difficult. We have a better definition of God in the Bible itself. I John 4 – “God is Love.”
Love is not a being. Love is a reality defined by a way of being and by relationship. God is the ultimate way of being called Love.
So, the 2nd Great Reformation that will reawaken the church is a return to seeing God as not a being like us but as Love itself.
The next big change the 2nd Great Reformation will bring us relates to Christ.
Let me begin this section by saying this about the figure of Christ – we underestimate how popular he still remains. While the church may be losing steam, while culture ignores, distorts, or even ridicules the Christian faith, while the world seems headed toward hell in a handbasket, people still look at Jesus and see the way to be human.
For a long time now, there’s been a division between those who see Christ on the cross as the most important image when it comes to Jesus, the traditional view, and those who see Christ on Mount Olive teaching the way of love as the most important image, the liberal view.
The 2nd Reformation will unite this old division by seeing them as indivisible. Christ preached the way of love. “No greater love than this,” Jesus taught, “that one would lay down his life for a friend.” Then, Jesus showed us the perfect example like he said he would. “I am the good shepherd,” Jesus taught, “and a shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” That’s what the good shepherd did!
Jesus taught the perfect love of God and showed us what that love looked like lived out, and most fully on the cross.
The new reformation will highlight Jesus more than anything else and welcome a diversity of thought on what about Jesus moves us, knowing they all go together and are seen most clearly in Christ’s selflessness.
And lastly, we move to the Spirit, the third focus of the new Reformation.
When we talk about the Spirit, we’re talking about the Spirit of Christ. And for Christ-followers, the spirit of Christ is where? In us.
And that is the Christian life. The Spirit of Christ living in us. Or we can even say, the Spirit of Love living in us.
Too often, Christianity and our everyday lives are divorced from one another. Maybe like our family, you have Pizza Night. Every Friday evening, we order and eat pizza. Well, too often our Christian lives become just a Sunday morning thing. But Chistianity is meant to be a 24/7, whole life kind of thing.
Church and the living of the Christian life where the Spirit of Christ lives in and through us, they go hand in hand. They feed into one another. We are part of church because community helps us live better Christian lives. And living Christian lives means we want to be part of a community.
A holistic Christianity will be part of the new reformation. A compartmentalized Christianity will no longer do.
So, as we close, let me envision a creed of the New Reformation.
God as love all around us and even in us instead of the big man upstairs;
Christ, at the center, as the divine-human preacher and perfecter of love who sacrifices all in the name of love, instead of Christ the divine savior versus Jesus the human teacher;
And the Spirit as the breath of love holistically living in and through us day to day, instead of a duty we visit only on Sunday mornings–
I for one feel it's a beautiful vision. May it be so.
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