To be ”above” or superior to everything and everybody is usually the equivalent of pride and self-sufficiency.  But to be in Jesus Christ above the present crisis and all that goes with it, is but a humble, happy position of faith, the strength of which is not in ourselves nor in our Christianity.  It´s not a question what we are, but where we are, i.e. in Christ.  In that I rejoiced as I pondered on the words in Gen. 7:17:  ”The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth!”

The ark is, as you will know, a picture of Christ.  Those in the ark picture our position in Him outside the reach of judgment.  The waters of the flood were God´s judgment on sin and its corruption on the earth.  The more it rained with judgment the more the ark was lifted up – “high above the earth”.

We do, in a true gospel sense, live in ”in the year of the Lord´s favor” (Luke 4:18-19), and yet God´s wrath is already revealed on sin.  These days we speak of a global crisis.  It´s interesting that the Greek word ”crisis” actually means judgment.

During my last visit to Norway I one night listened to one of my preaching friends who solemnly preached on Rom. 1:18-32 about the wrath of God already revealed (v.18) when it comes to ungodliness, unrighteousness and the perversions of sin, including the shameful, homosexual practice which has now become a human right.  (A few years ago an elected Italian commissioner in Bruxelles was expelled because he labeled homosexuality a sin).    My preaching friend said something like this when quoting Romans 1:  ”This degradation of sin is not only waiting for God´s judgment – it already is God´s judgment!” For we read, “God gave them up..”. 

Here´s one of the many blessed paradoxes for born again Christians to rejoice in.  The worse it is and is going to be in this world, the more the ark is lifted up!  Our contention is not: The worse it is to the more depressed we get!  No, this is the time where we should lift our heads and avail ourselves of our high position in Christ which is “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion…” etc. (Eph. 1:21), so in that way the people of God in Christ Jesus are above every crisis and all the forms of sin subject to the wrath of God.  I´m not sure if we hear so much of that nowadays from the pulpits.

Take these good words with you for this New Year, another year of God´s grace and favor – praise Him! -, and because we are lifted up and seated with Christ ”in the heavenlies” (Eph. 2:6), let us by His grace lift Him up to others, - to fellow believers who may for some reason be “down” and to a lost world.

-jn-

Jan. 4, 2010.