I asked my students today, “What would a nation full of Christians unafraid of death look like? How would it change our country?” There responses were varied but one conclusion they came to was that we would not have had only 40 people gathered at the City Hall steps to pray together for life on this anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. They decided the city streets would have been full of those who belong to God’s church in Jesus Christ for prayer.
I think they are right. Today as we look back on the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision we have aborted over 50 million babies in our nation. That is 1.3 million babies a year, over 3,200 babies a day, and 1 baby every 25 seconds. And today about 40 people from our community gathered from 12:00 – 1:00 PM to pray in a culture of death for life. But I do not think that the church is afraid of death itself, but afraid of the death of self. Jesus Christ says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” To take up one’s cross to follow Jesus is to lose life for the sake of the name of Christ. Therefore to save one’s life, to be afraid of the death of self, is to live for the sake of one’s own name. This is the fear of the American church, the fear of the death of self.
However, I believe that if the streets were filled with 4,000 people or 40,000 people it would not prove that the church is dying and taking up their crosses to follow Jesus for the sake of the glory of his name. It could mean that there is a really charismatic leader in town, or it has become popular to stand in the public square for civil rights, or people do not want to go to work. Numbers of church people gathered in the public square or church does not indicate that Christians are dying to the fame of their own names. But when those numbers are gathered because they are dying realizing they are nothing and can do nothing, and that God promises his church mercy, deliverance, restoration, growth and the advancement of God’s glory and kingdom of grace in the world, and they pray like their life and the lives of every other person relied upon those promises, then we know the church is dying to self unafraid.
But if the church and culture continues to desire and seek after their satisfaction in the creation and the creature and not the Creator and Redeemer, then we will continue to murder to preserve our own lives for fear of losing self. The hope of the unborn as well as those born is not the activity of the churches faith or the cultures actions. The hope of the unborn and those born is the mercy of God. Therefore the church must take up her cross, die to self for the sake of the name of Christ by pleading in prayer for God to give what he promises in his Word. The church must pray as though the lives of the unborn and the born depend upon the activity of God Almighty and Merciful and not upon the churches or the civil realms actions. If he can raise up stones to cry out in faith to him as children of Abraham, then he can certainly turn the stony, hard, impenitent hearts of men into hearts of flesh that will fear him and live for his own glory in worship and work. Therefore the church and culture must find themselves satisfied in all that God is for them in Jesus Christ, and so die to self in order to live for the lives of others and not the murder of others.
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