The peculiarity of the Christian religion, then, as has I been so often shown, and acknowledged even by opponents, lies in the person of Christ. All other religions are independent, to a certain degree, of their founders, because those founders were nothing more than their first confessors. But Jesus was not the first Christian ; he was and is the Christ. He is not the subject, but the object, of religion. Christianity is not the religion of Jesus, still less Jesus-worship,46 but Christ-religion. Christianity is now as dependent on him, from moment to moment, as when he trod this earth. For he is not a person who lived and worked only in the past, but he lives and works still, is still Prophet, Priest, and King, and himself upholds the church, which he established, from age to age, and assures to her the victory. Christianity, according to its own confession, does not exist through the strength and fidelity of its confessors, but through the life and will of its Mediator. The stages of the application of salvation are as much, and in the same sense, his interest as the im- petration of salvation. His will and his work is to make men truly religious, to bring them into fellowship with God, and that is also the will and the work of God himself. Herman Bavinck
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 00:01:25 +0000
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