Caleb Jacobs retweetledi
My favorite passage from any theological work, from Herman Bavinck’s Common Grace. I’ve thought about these two paragraphs every day for nearly three years. This, to me, summarizes everything that matters.
The Christian religion does not, therefore, have the task of creating a new supernatural order of things. It does not intend to institute a totally new, heavenly kingdom such as Rome intends in the church and the Anabaptists undertook at Munster. Christianity does not introduce a single substantial foreign element into the creation. It creates no new cosmos but rather makes the cosmos new. It restores what was corrupted by sin. It atones the guilty and cures what is sick; the wounded it heals. Jesus was anointed by the Father with the Holy Spirit to bring good tidings to the afflicted, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captive and the opening of prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and to comfort those who mourn (Isa. 61:1, 2). He makes the blind to see, the lame to walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised, and the gospel is preached to the poor (Matt. 11:5). Jesus was not a new lawgiver; he was not a statesman, poet, or philosopher. He was Jesus—that is, Savior. But he was that totally and perfectly, not in the narrow Roman Catholic, Lutheran, or Anabaptist sense but in the full, deep, and broad Reformed sense of the word. Christ did not come just to restore the religio-ethical life of man and to leave all the rest of life undisturbed, as if the rest of life had not been corrupted by sin and had no need of restoration. No, the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the communion of the Holy Spirit extend even as far as sin has corrupted. Everything that is sinful, guilty, unclean, and full of woe is, as such and for that very reason, the object of the evangel of grace that is to be preached to every creature.
Therefore Christ has also a message for home and society, for art and science. Liberalism chose to limit its power and message to the heart and inner chamber, declaring that its kingdom was not of this world. But if the kingdom is not of, it is certainly in this world, and is intended for it. The word of God which comes to us in Christ is a word of liberation and restoration for the whole man, for his understanding and his will, for his body and his soul. Sin entered the world, and for just that reason, "God so loved the world…” This word has often been seen as a burden too heavy to bear. Rome has made of it a yoke that oppresses and represses the natural. Nor are the Protestant churches blameless in this regard, for they have often turned the gospel into a new law. But that is mistaken. The gospel is not a law but good news! It came not to judge but to save. It is supernatural, because it has welled up from God's free, generous, and rich love. It does not kill but makes alive. It does not wound but heals. It is pure grace. And this grace does not cancel nature but establishes and restores it.
English
