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Real, Day 5

by David Joynt on March 14, 2019


MATTHEW 3:9 | Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.

What part of religion is individual and what part is communal? The Pharisees and Sadducees, and all righteous first century Jews, connected their ethnic identity and their religious status. God had chosen the Jewish people, together, as a covenant partner, and this was a matter of racial and tribal identity, signified by circumcision. There was great security in this connection!

John insists that group heritage and ethnic identity cannot be primary in our relationship with God. This individualizes faith. Each person must repent and confess to prepare for God’s judgement, and collective identity is irrelevant. In a similar way, Martin Luther insisted that participation in a church body, by itself, cannot guarantee our status before our Righteous Judge. Individual faith and repentance is primary, involvement in ecclesial community a consequence and a blessing. The Reformation took away the intermediaries, of ritual and priest, insisting the believer must stand alone before God.

To what extent is your faith individual?

To what extent is it communal?

 


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