Mark Driscoll Sermon

I watched an interesting sermon last night along with seeing Hawkes Bay win (pitty Northland won as well).

Anyway, the sermon is on the Mars Hill (Seattle) podcast on iTunes (by the way, despite the bugs, iTunes 7 rocks).

In the sermon Mark talks about the cross. He suggests that various church traditions have got it wrong by reducing the meaning of the cross to one thing rather than appreciating that it was a number of things. He used the analogy of a gem (like a diamond). A gem is a gem. However a gem has multiple sides, all of which need to be looked at for it to be truely appreciated.

The suggestion is that the cross is the gem of Christianity. It was victory over death. BUT... BUT... it was also substitutionary atonement. Jesus took the wrath of God in my place. He also cleansed me. He is also our example. The list can go on.

The suggestion is that it is important to grasp all of these aspects to really grasp the cross. However too often we are lazy and focus on just one of these aspects in our theology. What is worse is that we critique people who haven't got the same side of the gem as we have. I am pretty guilty of this.

What we should be critiquing is the one sided mono-dimensional approach to the cross. We should be encouraging people to understand that there can be many sides to the same thing.

This applies to many aspects of Christianity, in particular the relationship we are blessed to have with Jesus. Don't worry... I am not turning all relativist on you. There are some aspects that are one way. Jesus is the only (ONLY) way to be reconciled to God.

What I am suggesting is maybe we should be considering that when people are taking a different approach to the way we are, that perhaps it is a gem-like situation and that it could be that we are looking at only one side and they are looking at another side. And perhaps it is more important to look at the whole gem!!!