SHOULD WE REBUILD WHAT JESUS DIED TO DEMOLISH? “Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh -- who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands -- 12 that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, 15 having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, 16 and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. 17 And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. 18 For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. 19 Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:11-19). My concern about the division and disunity in the Body of Christ on the Plateau in particular and the Middle Belt in general made our church to commit its lean resources to enable me confront the problem by preaching and teaching on it on a weekly basis on PRTV Jos and NTA Kafanchan from January to December 2013. I had hoped that Christians would get the message and begin to celebrate unity and love among themselves. (All the DVDs are available on demand). But what is happening right now is baffling and a source of deep concern to every genuine child of God. Given the unprecedented pressure the church is confronting from the enemies of the gospel one would have expected Christians to cuddle themselves together to whether the storm; but the reverse is the case! No wonder the results! Apostle Paul teaches in Ephesians 2: 11-19, copied above, that Christ demolished on His cross all the middle walls of separation that divided us into different feuding camps and produced in Himself one new man manifesting inevitable peace, love and unity. In other words, the cross of Christ demolished the walls of ethnicity, denominationalism, statism, regionalism, gender bias, class differentiation, etc and produced one born anew man completely enraptured in love and unity. This is the essence of the cross. And this is the crux of the gospel message! To deliberately bring about the consciousness of the dividing wall of ethnicity or any of the other walls is an affront to the cross of Christ and a stab at the heart of the gospel message! It is a conscious effort to rebuild again what Jesus died to demolish! This is the reason why our ‘gospel’ today lacks the power to radically transform the hearts of men! We are producing, at best, spiritual politicians who are ready to use the Bible to cut down anyone that does not look like one of them, and at worst, we are raising in the church cannibals; who are ready eat the flesh and drink the blood of their perceived enemies all in defense of Christianity! Can there be a good enough reason to tear apart the Body that Christ paid with His blood to build? We must know that whatever gains we hope to have by so doing will turn gravel in our mouth when we stand before the Man we are wounding by our actions! Creating division and disunity in the Body of Christ is no less an attempt to crucify Jesus again on the cross! To me, this borders on apostasy. Those involved should know that they are courting the instant judgment of God. I am so embarrassed to know that some of the men I have respected as spiritual fathers are behind this! And they claim to be more spiritual than the others! May God have mercy on us! I want to call on all Christians to join hands with the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) and other similar bodies who labor to bring about love and unity in the Body of Christ. Let us stop rebuilding what Jesus died to demolish. Amen!
Posted on: Tue, 27 May 2014 19:38:20 +0000
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