The preacher was wanting to drive home the significance of Christ’s work of salvation. So he started his sermon by seeking to show that the world is in a mess. He sought to back this up with an appeal to the news. News is full of the world’s misery, he went on. Wars, terrorist attacks, economic disasters and tragedies.
But is this the right criterion for adjudging the world to be in a mess? I suspect that many of those listening to the preacher did not really believe what he was saying. Of course, we must all agree that terrible things happen in the world. But this is not the same as saying that the world is in a mess. We can even concede that the world of some people is in a mess. But for many of us "our" world isn’t really all that bad.
In fact, by using news reports about world miseries the preacher was actually achieving the very opposite of what he wanted to achieve. Because for many the message that "the world is in a mess" is actually somewhat reassuring. "My" world is really pretty good, on the whole.
Perhaps in the back of our preacher’s mind was a text like Galatians 1:4 which says that the Lord Jesus Christ "gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father." But Paul is operating with different criteria when he describes the world or this whole phase of history in this manner. Paul clarifies his meaning in Galatians 3:22:
But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what is promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.
That’s what makes this present age so evil and makes people so desperately in need to be rescued from it by Christ. It’s not so much the wars, the persecutions and atrocities committed. These are but symptomatic of a profound disorder. For the entirety of humanity outside of Christ are imprisoned by sin. The unbeliever, on hearing the preacher, needs to see that his world is in a mess because he is living a life that dishonours God and at odds with his will.
Posted December 26, 2008
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