This is the good news: you were created to know
that you are a son or daughter of your heavenly Father; and to exercise
life-affirming rule as a king or queen in this world, delegated to you by the
King of the Universe.
If you don’t recognise that, if that is not your
experience, you need to be set free.
Perhaps you have never known freedom; or perhaps you have known freedom
in the past, but somewhere along the line you have been taken captive – by fear,
or hurt, or jealousy, or the false promises of wealth or importance – and have
forgotten who you were created to be, what you were created for. To a greater or lesser degree, every one of
us needs to be set free, again and again: this is not an in/out divide.
Again and again the Bible records how God comes to
set people free – from slavery in Egypt, from idolatry in Israel, from exile in
Babylon, from impending destruction by Rome (that Prophet was thrown out of the city and killed) – and restore
them to their rightful place in his vision for the world. And the ultimate expression of this coming
and setting people free, to set others free, is found in the person of Jesus.
This is our story:
the story in which we find our identity:
the identity in which we find security,
in an uncertain world: the security which enables us to live confidently, in uncertain times.
You may have heard other accounts. That the Gospel is about forgiveness,
perhaps. The Gospel includes forgiveness (it is a key by which we are set free, by
which we set others free); but a Gospel of
forgiveness is at best incomplete – we are not only set free from slavery, but set free for sonship and kingship – and at worst
a gospel of sin-management rather than transformation. Or perhaps you were told that the Gospel is
an invitation into heaven. And it is,
but not as an other-worldly other-timely promise: it is the invitation and
challenge to step-into the kingdom of heaven – the sphere of God’s reign – in this
world today, and to extend it, driving back all rival claims, and
inviting/challenging others to do the same.
It
is about time we rediscovered the Good News.
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