E
EarlyActs
Guest
KLOV is pervasive. I'm in a remote part of the United States where maybe 50K can get the signal and there is an FM station here.
I wrote recently of the outcome-driven gospel of many Christians, but did not specify how much of this is from KLOV programming. Today I happened to take in a song in its program which features this type of good news. "Positive, encouraging" is it's motto after all. Every passage, every song is about the outcome in the believers life being for their good, in the usual Rom 8 style, which misses the objective meaning of good that God intended.
After this song was a minute explanation of power. It tried to compare the power of God to dynamite, or to a NASA launch and then turned right back to saying this is the kind of power that God has at work to make a panacea happen in your life. If you keep making the gospel confined to such outcome, you may one day ask, like a friend in a Bible college once did, 'what was the reason for Christ dying? God just does things directly for us in our lives.' The problem of life says KLOV is the stress of the commute. I mention this not only because they do, but because it is not a newsy channel as though it was actually up on today's news. The problems are much worse.
But I'm more concerned about a total distortion of Christ's power for us. It is nothing of the sort just mentioned. And because of the mass repetition of this kind of them in statements, minute-programs and music, KLOV is a huge disinformation, theologically.
The power of God in Christ should have the following two themes. 1, when Christ was enthroned, in the resurrection , he was entitled to this earth. To think otherwise is treason. All rulers and all people are to be advised: the enemies of the Son to whom this place is entitled will smash his enemies, Ps 2 and 110. This is raw apostolic preaching and I have never heard anything like it on KLOV in 5 years. The power the apostles recieved was not even the personal power to speak. That power came, but it was after the fact of the powerful Pentecost event which was God jump-starting the spread of the Gospel to all nations.
What Christ meant by power to the apostles was that there was now a message which could not be spoken against, because Christ was enthroned in the Davidic sense in the resurrection. It is a power of an entitlement, not of an explosion that solves financial pickles for you. All the power was in that message. Every knee should be bowing because he had been enthroned, in spite of all skeptical statements otherwise. It is not a matter of making this world 'perfect', it is not about how much control God has over events. It is God saying that all must bow to Christ.
2, the second kind of power that matters is that justification for our sins has come. Christ is our righteousness, satisfying the condemning decree against us. Once again this does not have anything to do with pleasant outcomes for us about this problem, stress, commute, disaster, or what else is against us.
IT is not not about the next experience we might have, it is not an experience. IT is instead the knowledge that God has acted as the Judge on our behalf by becoming the Judged (the guilty) and taken our sin. There will be great outcomes, but we preach Christ, we don't preach an outcome to people. This is a compelling power that makes us want to love Christ, and that in turn feeds into what was said above. This is power #2. I have never heard of this on KLOV in 5 years.
There is an experience involved, but it is that of Christ's, says Isaiah: 'by His experience the Righteous One will justify many from their sins.'
The song, by the way, was "You just haven't seen it yet." This is not true. The song is not a true Christian song. This is not classic, historic Christian teaching. Stop trying to see experiences directly in your lives and pay attention to what the apostles actually thought. The song means a superior experience awaits you, but Christians do not function that way. Much more important is that we have one event, one message for all time that is the compelling love of Christ about the person who died for all.
The idea that he died for a panacea life for you is ridiculous. There is no connection. It is not what the sacrifice/sin offering of Christ was about in any sense. This is the mass-repetition blather of KLOV. All they know is panacea-power, which is not at all the message of the New Testament.
I wrote recently of the outcome-driven gospel of many Christians, but did not specify how much of this is from KLOV programming. Today I happened to take in a song in its program which features this type of good news. "Positive, encouraging" is it's motto after all. Every passage, every song is about the outcome in the believers life being for their good, in the usual Rom 8 style, which misses the objective meaning of good that God intended.
After this song was a minute explanation of power. It tried to compare the power of God to dynamite, or to a NASA launch and then turned right back to saying this is the kind of power that God has at work to make a panacea happen in your life. If you keep making the gospel confined to such outcome, you may one day ask, like a friend in a Bible college once did, 'what was the reason for Christ dying? God just does things directly for us in our lives.' The problem of life says KLOV is the stress of the commute. I mention this not only because they do, but because it is not a newsy channel as though it was actually up on today's news. The problems are much worse.
But I'm more concerned about a total distortion of Christ's power for us. It is nothing of the sort just mentioned. And because of the mass repetition of this kind of them in statements, minute-programs and music, KLOV is a huge disinformation, theologically.
The power of God in Christ should have the following two themes. 1, when Christ was enthroned, in the resurrection , he was entitled to this earth. To think otherwise is treason. All rulers and all people are to be advised: the enemies of the Son to whom this place is entitled will smash his enemies, Ps 2 and 110. This is raw apostolic preaching and I have never heard anything like it on KLOV in 5 years. The power the apostles recieved was not even the personal power to speak. That power came, but it was after the fact of the powerful Pentecost event which was God jump-starting the spread of the Gospel to all nations.
What Christ meant by power to the apostles was that there was now a message which could not be spoken against, because Christ was enthroned in the Davidic sense in the resurrection. It is a power of an entitlement, not of an explosion that solves financial pickles for you. All the power was in that message. Every knee should be bowing because he had been enthroned, in spite of all skeptical statements otherwise. It is not a matter of making this world 'perfect', it is not about how much control God has over events. It is God saying that all must bow to Christ.
2, the second kind of power that matters is that justification for our sins has come. Christ is our righteousness, satisfying the condemning decree against us. Once again this does not have anything to do with pleasant outcomes for us about this problem, stress, commute, disaster, or what else is against us.
IT is not not about the next experience we might have, it is not an experience. IT is instead the knowledge that God has acted as the Judge on our behalf by becoming the Judged (the guilty) and taken our sin. There will be great outcomes, but we preach Christ, we don't preach an outcome to people. This is a compelling power that makes us want to love Christ, and that in turn feeds into what was said above. This is power #2. I have never heard of this on KLOV in 5 years.
There is an experience involved, but it is that of Christ's, says Isaiah: 'by His experience the Righteous One will justify many from their sins.'
The song, by the way, was "You just haven't seen it yet." This is not true. The song is not a true Christian song. This is not classic, historic Christian teaching. Stop trying to see experiences directly in your lives and pay attention to what the apostles actually thought. The song means a superior experience awaits you, but Christians do not function that way. Much more important is that we have one event, one message for all time that is the compelling love of Christ about the person who died for all.
The idea that he died for a panacea life for you is ridiculous. There is no connection. It is not what the sacrifice/sin offering of Christ was about in any sense. This is the mass-repetition blather of KLOV. All they know is panacea-power, which is not at all the message of the New Testament.