Bible and Mission

  As the Western world shifts to embrace a post-Christian culture, we might pause to remember from what we were delivered when Christian faith first took hold of pagan antiquity.   For this, we might quote someone at the beginning of Christian witness in the Roman Empire—the apostle Paul—and someone writing at the end of pagan rule in the early 4 th century—Eusebius.   If we wanted to play with the language of today, we might say that Christianity ‘cancelled’ the cultures of the Graeco-Roman world; but that would not be quite accurate.   Christians were persecuted and murdered during those first 300 years, but the Church steadily grew.   They witnessed to the culture and could not have cancelled it even if they wanted to do so.   Only once the first Christian emperor, Constantine, began to pass laws and favour the Church did any power come into play against pagan culture.   By that time, many, many people had embraced Christianity.   Today’s canc...

  The boldness of Christian prayer lies not in any merits of our own or in that of others but wholly in Jesus Christ our Lord.   Nor does it lie in some working up of faith on our part where God is held to the mat and forced to honour our requests because we have achieved some level of effective faith.   Indeed, such a false understanding of faith turns faith into a work of our own.  As a work, such faith is understood to be a merit of our own that requires God to reward.   This erroneous view of faith is the antithesis of a faith in God that acknowledges Him as the author of every good and perfect gift (James 1.17).   Our confidence is not in ourselves but in God.   We know that God is our Heavenly Father.   He wants us to come to Him, to make known our requests before Him (Philippians 4.6).   James encourages us to ask God for what we need, though with right motives (4.2-3). Our access is not through human merit but through Christ Jesu...