In our culture where relativism is the prevailing philosophy, life is viewed as little more than a bundle of contradictions existing in a morass of confusion. In an odd and most horrifying way, man's inhumanity to man seems to plummets to new depths with every news report of violence. Yet, for all of this, the wisdom writer reminds us, "Concerning the conditions of the sons of men, God tests them, that they may see that they themselves are like animals" (Ecclesiastes 3:18). This passage speaks to the free choices of men whose only concern is this earth-life and who do not acknowledge any moral accountability before God. Even so, such horror of man's abuse of his free will, should serve as a reminder for all those who abhor such choices to look beyond this world to God for guidance. Only then, can we put the inexplicable violence of our day in proper perspective.
Having said this, we also acknowledge much of what passes for signs pointing to God in the religious world often leaves men confused and estranged from God. This is due in large measure because the religion of our day has moved itself along on the ever shifting winds of the doctrines of men. Thus, rather than point men heavenward to God through the Lord Jesus Christ and His teaching found in the Bible it has anchored men to this world by exalting their party or their denomination. Is this not the Lord's point to the religious of His day when He rebuked their hypocrisy calling to their mind the words of Isaiah the prophet saying, "These people draw near to Me but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men" (Matthew 15:8-9).
The competing schools of religious thought and traditions had left the people confused and disillusioned. Yet Jesus did not see it as a hopeless, or at best a merely tolerable, situation. In fact, when Jesus came to the multitudes and saw them as shepherd less sheep, "He began to teach them" (Mark 6:34). If the Son of God, who came to reveal the will of God, saw the harried conditions of humanity and was moved to teach them how can we today do any better than to listen and follow His teaching?
The message of Christ cannot succeed in the lives of men if they will not study and practice it. Those professing to be followers of Christ must hear and heed the message in their own lives. Only then will others, who otherwise may not be inclined, examine the probative value of our living hope in God's word and the Christ who makes it real (1 Peter 1:3; James 1:19-21). The apostle Paul reminded the Christians at Corinth, "Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart" (2 Corinthians 3:2-3). Thus, it is to this end, namely that others would see Christ in us, that we are exhorted and admonished to study.
To see Christ in a person is to see a life rich in hope and filled with purpose. This life of hope and purpose does not exist in a vacuum apart from the world. It is able to give its fullest expression, as it is confronted by the world and overcomes its challenges, living and walking in the Spirit (Galatians 5:24,25). One is not less of a person for having yielded to the Spirit of God. To the contrary, one is never more like that real person created in the image of God than when he/she has been made whole again, crowned with glory and honor in Christ our Savior (Hebrews 2:9-10).
~In Gospel Power, Anderson, Alabama, 8/3/97.