6 Jan 2023
We have noted the tumultuous times we are living in; we have seen the challenges facing believers in these “last days” and we sense the disillusion, disappointment, and despair ‘hovering in the air’.
But as believers, we need to refocus on the centre and heart of the Gospel. God’s good news is Jesus. Jesus Christ is the heart and soul of the gospel. We have seen that the Christian life is union with Christ; it is essentially Christ living in us and we living in Him.
As we face 2023 and beyond, Jesus Christ has to be proclaimed in all His radiance, wonder and glory. There is no place in proclaiming a reduced and impoverished Christ to the world. To challenge and persuade the world, we must proclaim Christ to the world in all His fullness and wonder.
For believers, we need to remind ourselves that discipleship is about following Christ, not simply locating Him at the right place in our doctrinal map. The Christian life is lived by fixing our eyes on Jesus (Hebrews 12:2). The secret of endurance, says the Author of Hebrews, is to concentrate on Jesus Himself and to gaze steadily at Him.
Jesus is our sustainer, our source of strength to action, our sovereign grace giver, the “founder and perfecter of our faith”(Heb.2:18;4:16;12:2). Faith is a compound of knowing, trusting, hoping and stubbornly persisting in trustful hope against all odds. Faith can do this because the One who has graciously brought us to faith, and whom we now trust, helps us to do it.
Modeling Christ, as part of the larger process of being modeled by Him is thus the essence of the Christian life. Christians learn to live in Christ, to follow and fulfill the example that Christ has set us, and to recognise that this is the only way to maturity – we need to keep in step with the Master and divine leader with whom we are inseparably united. This is God’s provision for us to face the adversities, challenges and difficulties in our pilgrimage on earth as we make our way with Him to the ‘promised land’.