From "Living in the Matrix"

This week's passage comes from my favorite periodical, Modern Reformation, and it is from an article by David Wells, distinguished research professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. His article addresses the issue of how the church can exist in today's affluent and postmodern culture. You can read the entire article at Modern Reformation's website.

"There is a line drawn between God and ourselves. It clearly is invisible to us as sinners, otherwise we would not imagine that the sacred can be accessed on our terms and when we want. The reverse is, in fact, true. It is that God hides himself from us. His salvation is not within our grasp, it is not on the market as another product, nor is it emerging from deep within the self. God is inaccessible to us. We are locked out. It was he who had to cross that boundary line that separates us from himself because, no matter how urgently and earnestly we reach upward, no matter how spiritual we want to be, we cannot connect. This line is crossed only from his side, not from ours. It is crossed only by him and never by us because in crossing it he must do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. That is why repeatedly in the New Testament we read that Christ came from "above" (e.g., John 6:33, 8:42, 10:36) and we should infer from this that he is therefore never a discovery from "within," as if self-exploration is a religious quest, nor can he be accessed by our reaching upward toward him. No, he was "sent" into the world . . . and came to us who are "below." At the cross, he did for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He bore our sin in substitutionary atonement and in so doing he instructed us on how we must understand our spirituality. At its heart, spirituality is moral because at the center of all reality is a God who is holy. That is why there is no authentic, saving spirituality without Christ's atonement."

from "Living in the Matrix," Modern Reformation, January/February 2009